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WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 







% , A 'I 4 tfVgl 




WEEPERS 
IN PLAYTIME 


BY 

BEATRICE SANDS 


NEW YORK 

JOHN LANE COMPANY 
MCMVIII 


LIBRARY of OONUKE.33 
I WQ Copies \ 

JUL 10 lyutj 



Copyright, 1908, 

By JOHN LANE COMPANY 


IDeepers in playtime. 

“ But the young, young children, O my brothers. 

They are weeping bitterly; 

They are weeping in the playtime of the others. 

In the country of the free.” 

Elizabeth B. Browning. 


With grateful love this hook is dedicated to 

Ikatrtna ^raeft 

The Lad ye of Taddo, 

whose tender sympathy and love for all sufferers y 
especially our little shadow brothers and sisterSy 
has been an inspiration in the writing 
of this story. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER ,40E 

I. Como — L’ Allegro, 

II. Como — II Penseroso, 7 

III. Farewell to Como — Hubert Wayne, . . -13 

IV. New York — The Child, 19 

V. New York — Winter and Alone, . . .24 

VI. The Institution — The Problem, . . .37 

VII. Christmas — Happiness, 50 

VIII. Sequel to Christmas Eve — Dolores, . . .59 

IX. Tinker Bell and the Problem, . . . - 72 

X. Mrs. Barnard Tries the Solution, . . - 85 

XI. Mary Rilan’s Lesson — Dolores, . . .96 

XII. The Lilac Bush and the Star, . . .no 

XIII. The Seaside Home — The Slum Problem, . .127 

XIV. The North Woods — M iss Aurelia’s Work, . 144 

XV. “The Gull’s Nest” — The Golden Week, . 158 

XVI. New York — The City Orphan House, . . 180 

XVII. Blackwell’s Island — Life’s Tragedy, . . 195 

XVIII. Night and the Storm — Death, .... 209 

XIX. Winter — Peace in the North Woods, . .218 

XX. Mrs. Schuyler’s Confession and the Child, ‘ . 231 

XXI. The Accident — Paradise, 242 

XXII. Spring — Beauty and Love, . . . - 256 

vii 





PREFACE 


‘‘They are weeping in the playtime of the others/^ 
weeping because while they are sheltered, clothed and 
fed, all that is personal, all that is individual is starving, 
dying. Their will-power, their moral force are grow- 
ing weaker with the motion of the big machine of 
which they are a part. 

When we consider the vast population of little 
people growing up in the Institutions of this land, we 
are surprised to find how few men and women we know 
who have been Institution-bred children. 

Where do they go? 

We read the awful answer in the items of the muni- 
cipal report of a State, generous and faithful in the 
care of its destitute children. In 1898, ninety-four 
^er cent of the criminals then in its custody had grown 
up in Institution life. 

In 1906 Greater New York supported 48,000 home- 
less little ones and there are many more thousands of 
them all over our country who must prove a menace 
or a blessing to the next generation. 

Thus we see that it is a large and urgent matter de- 


X 


PREFACE 


serving our serious thought and earnest consideration. 

Having had unusual opportunity to know the inner 
life of a number of the best of our so-called “Homes” 
for homeless children, to face the problem became, to 
me, imperative. Every detail of the Institution life 
in this stor>^ is a part of what I there found and is told 
exactly as it happened. 

It has been told in story form because we are a story- 
loving generation; and it is a message not to the few 
who are already earnest and strong in desire for all 
reform, but also to every man and woman in whose 
heart there lives the love of the nation’s welfare. 

The plot is fictitious, but the life of our little shadow 
brothers and sisters, as it is herein recorded, is verily 
authentic. 


Beatrice Sands. 


It gives me great pleasure to testify to my unre- 
served confidence in regard to the facts upon which 
the author of this volume bases its statements. 
Those who know her are agreed in their absolute 
confidence in her truthfulness and trustworthiness, 

HENRY C, POTTER, 


il 


\ 





“ The common problem, yours, mine, every one’s. 
Is not to fancy what were fair in life 
Provided it could be, but finding first 
What may be, then find how to make it fair 
Up to our means — a very different thing.” 


Browning. 














WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


\ 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


CHAPTER I 
COMO — l’allegro 

“Life is so beautiful, Gerald, it seems to stifle me.’’ 
Eleanor threw back her head and turned a face of 
strength and ardent enthusiasm toward where the 
shining blue showed the fair face of Lake Como. 

Gerald, standing on the bank, looked down at the 
slight, graceful figure in the pretty white summer gown 
sitting on the gnarled, moss- covered stump of an old 
tree. Her sensitive, slender hands were clasped, the 
sunlight was playing on her fair hair, as if to make a 
halo. Though her eyes were large, her mouth small 
and sensitive, her singular beauty did not depend upon 
her regular features, but rather on the splendid 
enthusiasm, eager alertness, the vigorous life, that 
brought color into her cheeks, the shadows into her 
I eyes, and the ever changing play of smiles and dimples 
I to the soft cheeks and little red lips. She was em- 
I phatically alive — intensely alive — ^and Gerald knew that 
I wherever those brown eyes flashed, and the glory of 
I the sunny hair touched life, there would always be 
I beauty and sunshine for him. 

! “The world’s all right. It’s just one’s point of 


2 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


view that sets things out of focus for some unlucky 
dogs/’ he answered. 

There was a long pause. Then Eleanor said 
solemnly, “That’s just it, Gerald. We have been 
growing in joy all these four months. We began with 
the beauty of that service — the flowers and the music 
and that wonderful sacred awe that seemed like an 
echo of the joy there must have been in heaven because 
I was made your wife. Then life began to grow. 
England was beautiful; we were happy. Scotland 
was wilder, stronger; we grew closer; it became 
happiness. The Continent, rich with art, seemed but 
the expression of all the beauty that was in our lives. 
And in dear old Italy it grew to joy. And now, this 
morning, with the hills about us and the lake smiling 
up at us, it has grown beyond — it is bliss. Oh! i 
Gerald, it makes me afraid.” 

“Don’t be afraid of joy, little woman. But dear, 
haven’t you always been happy?” Gerald sat down 
beside her and looked eagerly into her face, his gentle 
blue eyes tenderly anxious. 

She pushed back his curling brown hair from his 
boyish forehead, as she said, “Not being miserable 
isn’t being happy, Gerald. I don’t think I ever had ' 
a real sorrow. Father’s death came before I canj 
remember. I was sorry when mother married Mr. : 
Schuyler; but he brought me chocolates. He has 
made her happy and he has been kind to me always, 'j 
from the time that he first brought the chocolates, till 
he gave me to you that day in church. If you had 
asked me a year ago if I was happy, I would have 


COMO— L’ALLEGRO 


3 


said ‘Yes’ and believed it, only because I did not know 
that degree measures quality; but after all, to love 
alone is joy.” 

The rhythmic splash of a paddle was the only sound 
for a time, then a little bird pierced the still air with 
a ripple of silver song. 

Suddenly Eleanor flashed her brown eyes full upon 
him, glowing and radiant. “I never thought of it 
before. It is you, Gerald, that makes all the world to 
me; your love is the sun of my life. That is why the 
poor peasant who brought the flowers to sell looked 
so unutterably black, dreary and dismal. Her baby 
is three weeks old. Her husband deserted her a 
month ago. She tried to tell me, but she cried so 
pitifully, I couldn’t make much out of it; and, do you 
know, I didn’t want to hear because it was all misery 
and dreariness. I was almost sorry I had pitied her. 
Her eyes are beautiful and I couldn’t get away from 
their agony. And the child is so tiny and helpless. I 
put a coin in its little red fist and said a word to her 
and it all poured out like a torrent that has broken the 
dam. Madame told me afterward, the poor thing 
had not shed a tear before and would let no one speak 
to her of her sorrow, but goes away to lonely places 
where she will not be seen. She gathers wild, rare 
flowers which she sells to the tourists by the boy Beppo; 
but she brought mine herself. I believe it was the 
perfect joy in my heart made her want to come to me. 
Poor thing! just the attraction of opposites; the 
relation of contrasts.” 

Gerald tossed a pebble down the bank, and, as the 


4 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


circle spread across the shining waters, he said, “ It 
is that something in you that makes everyone tell you 
his heart’s secrets and try to hide all the devil that 
is in them from you; and when you look like that it 
makes one feel that a hand or an eye would be a small 
price to pay for the chance to live over the bad minutes 
in one’s life. It’s an awful thing to have to live up to 
being your other half. Do you realize what it imposes 
upon me? Really, Eleanor, it almost kept me from 
asking you to let me try. You are not a bit like other 
women.” 

“And you, Gerald, are not the least bit like other 
men; not like anyone that ever lived. Oh! I do hope 
as our lives go on, I will grow to be a better, stronger 
woman. You don’t think one must suffer to grow 
strong, do you ? It is the beauty all around that makes 
the forest trees grow to such a height. And the ocean 
that is the mightiest force in the world is set about on 
every side with the greatest beauty; in its farthest, 
mightiest depths it is all beauty; and from the sun- 
rise to the sunset and through the night, when the 
stars and the moon seem to set every wave with a 
hundred jewels, it is all beauty.” 

He held her slender hand between his larger, stronger 
ones as he said, “You have your setting, and it is all 
beauty. And you have force and strength enough 
for us both. For heaven’s sake! don’t try to grow to 
anything higher, or I won’t even be able to see you, you 
will be so far above me. And oh, whatever happens, 
you’re never to suffer.” 

She answered very softly, “I would gladly suffer, 


COMO— L’ALLEGRO 


5 


Gerald, to be better fitted to be your wife, but I am a 
coward. I am afraid of pain. I’d rather grow just 
through living in and with the beautiful. I.ook at 
that bird atilt on the very edge of the bough, almost 
touching the water — was there ever anything more full of 
grace? And look at that wild tangle of rhododendron 
as the sun touches it; it is a glory. Did you ever see 
anything more beautiful than the cloud shadows on 
the mountains to-day? And the lake — the wonder 
of its beauty is beyond words. That poor peasant, 
Philomena, with her wailing child, has no part in such 
a world: she is a blot in the picture; a discord in the 
harmony which the great Creator made and meant to 
be perfect. There isn’t anything greater than beauty 
in the world, but love; and that is part of beauty. If 
we might never go away from here, what would we be- 
come? — all love and beauty through a long lifetime. 
I wonder if we’d be ready for anything greater ? Would 
we keep on growing to meet the greatness just beyond ? ” 
“That water-color you admired yesterday I sent on 
to meet us in New York, so when you get back to 
brownstone rows, paved streets and noisy shops, you 
will have something to keep your enthusiasm alive. 
You see I have you: but you, with just me, will often be 
hard up; so I’ll have to make it up to you in some way. 
I wish you knew me as I do you, through and through, 
Eleanor; it would be easier and better all around.” 
Gerald rose as he spoke and stood looking down at 
her with a very tender yearning in his blue eyes. She 
came to him with all the passion of her love shining back 
at him from the depth of her brown eyes. He drew 


6 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


her very close in a desperate tenderness. There was 
something stronger in his whispered, “Sweetheart,’^ 
than she had ever known in him. 

The tiny bird on the bough called softly to his mate, 
who answered from some leafy remoteness with a soft, 
caressing murmur. The water lapped against the 
green moss at their feet. Lake Como turned its fairest, 
sweetest face to smile upon them. Across her blue 
water came two voices, low and sweet: 

“Oh, wert thou in the cauld blast — 

I’d shelter thee.” 

They stood together, listening. The world seemed 
listening. Even when the last notes of the old song 
and its echo were stilled, the silence spoke of what no 
words could say. Paradise was near; life was love; 
and love all joy and bliss. Then through the stillness 
broke the wild, bitter cry of a child. 

*‘We walk through the gardens with hands linked together, 

And the lilies look large as the trees; 

And as loud as the birds sing the bloom-loving bees; 

And the birds sing like angels, so mystical fine: 

And the cedars are brushing the arch -angel’s feet; 

And home is eternity, — love is divine. 

And the world is complete.” 


Elizabeth Browning. 


CHAPTER II 


COMO — IL PENSEROSO 

A CLOUD passed over the sun, not casting a shadow, 
but hiding its face and seeming to drink up all the golden 
beauty that a moment before had bathed the world. 
The child’s cry rose upon the gray air, a wail of 
protest. Gerald shivered and turned toward the path 
— the path that lay dark and gray among the shadows 
of the great trees arching overhead. 

Eleanor drew close to him, and they went toward 
the shadows, till, where the path turned and great 
trees threw a black pall — some one waited, some one 
who was part of the blackness, part of the shadow. 

Was it hours ago, or years ago? Was she the same 
joyous Eleanor who had been part of the sunshine; 
or some other worn, half-dead creature who was 
drawn forever into the shadow of the blackness, the 
shadow of life, out of its sunshine — forever and ever 
and ever? How long had she been hidden among the 
tangle of ferns and flowers in this wild place above the 
lake, hearing those words over and over, as they rang 
upon her brain with the wail of a knell ? They had 
sounded out of the shadow, in that cold, hard voice — 
not loud, too even and cruel for passionate burst; yet 
it seemed now to have been a thunder blast that had 
7 


8 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


deafened her ears to all other sounds. Was that little 
bird yonder singing ? His throat seemed fairly bursting 
with sound, yet she heard only those words — “Have 
you told this girl I am your wife, Gerald Winthrop ? ” 

She had expected to see him kill the woman for her 
lie. He stood, turned to stone. In the darkness of 
that awful minute his face showed ashy, and his eyes 
blazed like live coals, but with no denial. 

Eleanor remembered now the stifling effort that she 
had made for breath; she heard vaguely her Gerald 
and that woman in the shadow talking. What they 
said she could not follow; all her senses were reeling. 
Now she knew that they two had played with eternal 
things as a child with a toy. Gerald had turned his 
ashy face to her once only, with a cry: “I was a boy, 
Eleanor — only twenty. We never loved, though we 
were married.’’ She could not hear the rest for the 
roar that those awful words, in that cold, hard tone 
were making through the world — “I am your wife!” 

She knew she had looked back at him while he talked 
as a stone statue would have done. She thought she 
had not heard; yet now she remembered he had said 
something of Saratoga, and a gay time there with 
that shadow woman. Unexpectedly, suddenly, she 
had been made his wife; it came about as part of the 
lark. “Oh, God in heaven, what are mortals? Have 
they all hearts that can break? How can they turn 
them into foot-balls? Will the judgment day waken 
them into anything real and vital?” Oh! the blessing 
of the brier-rose to pierce her hand as she clutched at 
the wild tangle of living things on which she lay. 


COMO— IL PENSEROSO 


9 


Perhaps for a time she was unconscious, then again 
she seemed to be back in the path. Gerald was 
speaking. The woman, she thought, was gone; she 
had been swallowed up in the shadow, the blackness 
to which she belonged. She could not remember the 
words — it was as if she had lived, not heard, what he 
was telling her. . . . After they were married they 
had gone to Germany. They had kept it quiet to 
evade Gerald’s guardian. Very soon they had differed; 
they had never loved: it became hate. They had 
separated in less than a year, breaking lightly, after a 
quarrel, the vows registered in the eternal Book of 
Life, made before the world, before God. 

Gerald had come home — loved her, Eleanor. Was 
she who lay in the awful agony, Eleanor? He said he 
loved her — loved and deceived? Impossible! There 
had come news of a ship, lost off the coast of Brittany 
with a list of the passengers. He had come that very day 
and asked her to be his wdfe. He intended to tell her 
everything, but they were so happy he put off the 
' terror of it that she might have the fullness of agony 
' now. The shadow woman he called Jean had, for 
' some cruel future’s sake, not sailed on the “Bohemian” 

I at the last moment. So she was alive: but she, 
Ij Eleanor, was dead — most of her was dead already, 
ij the rest soon would be. God was good and merciful; 
ii He would give her release. 

1 She had not spoken; she could not: but Gerald had 
I gone on and on, — had it been for minutes or years? 
! She could not hear a word; her heart had called out 
Ij for light — to see the right — to remember her pure 

I 


lO 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


womanhood. Then he had stretched out his arms 
to her; she felt herself tottering, but she drew her 
strength from some power not her own. Was it her 
voice, or that of a mummy, buried centuries ago, that 
said, in a hard, dry, dead cadence, ‘'Then / am not 
your wife!” 

There had been a passionate burst. She never 
dreamed him capable of such power: it swept about 
her like a tempest. He caught and held her hands by 
force — she was weak, utterly weary: just once more 
the comfort of his strong arms, the joy of his love; 
afterwards she would think and decide. The sun 
burst through the gra}Tiess; a golden ray fell upon her; 
she was conscious her white dress gleamed — a symbol 
of her pure womanhood — yet she was in the light. 

She drew from him and stood with clasped hands, 
still in the sunlight. Again she said, in the same dead 
voice, cold and hard, “Then I am not your wife! Go, 
and go quickly.” 

The shadows had fallen closely about her; yet she 
stood in a single shaft of light, and he had gone into the 
shadow. The world had reeled on its course like a 
mad hurricane. She knew that the bark of the tree 
to which she clung was very rough. At last a blessed 
unconsciousness came, from which she started, to 
spring up from the ground at the foot of the old tree 
where she had fallen, with a horror lest Gerald should 
come back, and in her pitiable weakness she should 
forget her womanhood, forget that she was not his 
wife. “O God, the world was one great terror, one 
horror.” Then she had hurried through the bushes 


COMO— IL PENSEROSO 


II 


blindly, seeing no path, though she passed many. 
Had she crossed countries or worlds as she stumbled 
on, for minutes or years, before she had fallen in this 
wild place half up the mountain? Was it hours ago 
or years? Would death come? Who would find her? 
There was no Gerald, no one to look for her. They 
had left her maid behind them two days ago. She 
) was quite alone, (juite apart from the world; she 
' could die of her misery. 

Why hadn’t the poor peasant Philomena died? 
And that other woman, Jean — who belonged to the 
shadow — what had she lived for — just to make misery ? 
What a boy Gerald was when he first went to school: 

, he had come back with such lordly airs. They had 
lived through the brightest years of childhood, sharing 
every pleasure. It was after his college days that he 
had gone off with a gay crowd. Rumor said he was 
responsible for his guardian’s gray hairs, and that if 
he was not stopped, his big fortune would be a small 
one soon. It was after they had come from the East, 
he had suddenly turned up and then — “O God, what 
is life for?” How the wind roars, and the lake sounds 
like a sea. Are those stars — she used to believe they 
were angels’ eyes. Would they look down pityingly 
to-night? Then from some place near her, up to the 
very stars, thrilled the wonderful heart- throbbing song 
of the nightingale. It enwrapped the world — silenced 
the throbbing, aching heart. 

A sudden stillness stretched out over life with a 
brooding tenderness. Then the dreary wail of a child 
pierced the night. The peasant girl pushed her way 


12 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


through the bushes, laid her baby on the ground, her 
dark eyes gleaming with loving, ardent devotion, 
which never faltered as she helped carry the unconscious 
form through the black night, nor during the long hours 
while Eleanor lay white and motionless, gazing fixedly 
at the low-raftered ceiling of her room. After a time, 
the old doctor left, but through the night Philomena 
watched and worked with ceaseless care. 

When the gray dawn crept over the eastern hills and 
looked through the low, leaded window panes, from 
out the further comer came the child’s shrill, helpless 
wail. The fixed eyes turned. Eleanor reached her 
arms for the child and when the mother unwillingly 
brought it, with almost passionate tenderness she 
drew it to her breast, where it nestled close, hushed its 
moan, and when Philomena bent over the bed to take 
it, she found them both fast asleep. 

“The night has a thousand eyes, 

And the day but one; 

Yet the light of the whole world dies 
With the dying sun: 

The mind has a thousand eyes, 

And the heart but one; 

Yet the light of a whole life dies 
When love is done.” 


CHAPTER III 


FAREWELL TO COMO — HUBERT WAYNE 

With a wild dash the storm swept down the moun- 
tain, bringing an icy blast in its teeth, as if the Alps from 
their greatest heights sent forth the breath of death 
and with it the chill that comes only when snow lays a 
winding-sheet over the earth. Each mountain peak 
wore its shroud, which but yesterday stood like a green 
living creature against the azure sky, guarding the 
lake which then lay like a bit of sapphire, but to-day 
was a yellow-brown turbulent, angry sea, as unlike 
the Como of yesterday as Eleanor was unlike the 
sunny, light-hearted woman who dreamed dreams on 
its fair banks. 

The rain beat in sheets against the small panes. At 
least the heart of Mother Nature was atune with her 
heart. 

Was the low ceiling crushing her life as the wine- 
press does the fruit ? Was [the blast outside really the 
moan of her woman’s life dying in the shadow and cold 
of a cruel and awful world ? The tiny helpless creature 
in the warmth of her breast had forgotten the misery of 
the world in which he found no welcome — ^he slept. 

There was a light in the depths of Philomena’s dark 
eyes. Through her devotion she was satisfying the 
hunger of her heart, turning from its despair. But 
13 


14 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


why did she look so frightened? She was bringing 
something which yet she seemed trying to hide. Why 
should she hesitate? Nothing could matter now; 
neither pain nor pleasure could touch her now that 
she was so nearly dead. 

Just a telegram — ^how incongruous and out of place, 
and yet it must be from Gerald. WTiat could he say ? 
Then she read — ‘'Over for a rest. Will run down 
for a peep of you and your blissful life, Thursday, by 
boat — Hubert Wayne.” 

Was this piece of eternity Thursday? Then he 
would come soon. The Swiss clock said ten; at eleven 
the boat was due. Dear old friend ! She had always 
gone to him with what she thought were troubles; 
now he was coming to her. He would understand as 
no one else in the morld could; he always understood 
everything, and poor wretches in the hospitals would 
turn to him when they would let neither friend nor 
priest come near them. Ned Anderson told some 
wonderful stories at lunch the day her engagement 
was announced. He had just got in as House Doctor 
in one of the large hospitals. Dr. Wayne had sent an 
excuse just before limch was served. Mr. Schuyler 
had said something about his never being ready for 
things: called him visionary and a sentimentalist — a 
little old-fogyish for a man of his practice and his 
position. The quiet Ned had burst forth as she had 
never before heard him: told of the sick children 
watching hour after hour for his coming and for his 
handshake; of the women in their despair to whom 
he gave courage. Oh! those women — she was one 


FAREWELL TO COMO 


15 

of them now, but it was beyond his skill to help her; 
yet, he was coming and that was well. 

The boat broke through the mist of rain and sleet as 
if she had been a phantom ship. Eleanor drew her 
plaid closer, the icy wind seemed to freeze the very 
marrow of her bones. She was standing on the bank 
|: above the little pier. The storm howled and shrieked 
as it battered wildly against her, but only in such a 
place, against such a pressure, could she tell her agon- 
ized story. She could see the smile in his kind eyes as 
he came through the storm, up the bank. He saw 
' her, but without recognition, and turned to offer his 
umbrella to a woman unprotected from the rain. 

Again he looked and knew her. Eleanor tottered, 

, but he drew her under the shelter of the umbrella, 
into the protection of his strong arm. She would not 
go in out of the storm, though it beat wildly, and so 
j he went with her, she clinging to him, fighting the wind 
and rain, telling him what she could; and he, with the 
experience of years of ready perception and quick 

[ sympathy, daily meeting life’s crooked circumstances 
and pitiful mistakes, grasped the whole with terrible 
.1 indignation and spread about her the protection and 
j shelter of his noble, strong manhood. 

Eleanor could remember one day when she was a 
child and he a college man home for the holidays, how 
frightened she had been at a dog fight and how every 
il one had laughed at her and called her silly, but he had 
picked her up and carried her away to safety. If only 
she could be picked up now and carried away out of 
the awfulness of life’s hard, cruel fight. She had told 


i6 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


him only the bare facts, yet each word had burned 
into her very being like a live coal, scorching and 
searing all that had been life. She had made no 
comment, no moan of her agony, yet he understood 
with that wonderful intuitive sympathy the things 
that would have broken her heart to put into words. 
He had asked nothing but brought her back to the 
hotel, put her on a couch before the fire, covered her, 
and made her drink something — and then she must 
have slept. When she wakened she was not sur- 
prised to find everything arranged for their immediate 
departure. Philomena had her things packed. Eleanor 
wondered at nothing, asked no questions. 

The rain had stopped; a gray, leaden pall had fallen 
upon the world when the boat pulled wearily from the 
little wharf. On board was the doctor with Philomena 
and the child taking her away from Lake Como, back 
to face life. Dr. Wayne insisted on a maid and 
Philomena begged for a trial. The child was to be 
left with Beppo’s mother, but when it came time for 
the farewell Philomena’ s heart failed and she refused 
to leave him. Eleanor urged, “Let him come. We 
w’ill manage some way. He is all that she has left, 
and then he can make the moan that I must not or I 
will be a coward; and yet it will seem, if he does it for 
me, to lessen life’s bitter agony.” So now they were 
off — the man of importance in medical circles, whose 
word carried weight in his profession, the girl who a 
year ago had in the “Daily Press” been called a 
“Newport belle,” the simple-hearted peasant and the | 
helpless baby. 


FAREWELL TO COMO 


17 


Dr. Wayne touched her shoulder and pointed to 
where a high peak, snow-crowned, caught the rays of 
the sun, hidden from those below by the screen of gray 
clouds, glowing like a jewel in the setting of a gray 
world. He said no word, only stood there beside her. 

Eleanor caught his hand. “It is like your goodness 
I in a cold, haid world; all this trouble in the middle of 
' your little bit of rest and recreation. How selfish of me 
I not to have thought of it before; but I would have 
i died if you had not come. I hope some day that I 
I can do something for you.” Then she added, rather 
i anxiously, “Where are we going now?” 

I He said, with his rare smile, “This is the right, the 
privilege of a friend to be of use in time of need. We 
I are on our way to Milan; from there we go to Genoa; 

it will be a more direct, though a longer way. The 
! voyage will give you time to readjust yourself before 
I you reach home.” 

! Eleanor caught at the rail and gasped. “O Doc- 
tor! Home! I cannot go home. I would have to 
tell it all over and the horror would kill me.” 

He took her hand as her father might have done. 
“You will let me tell it for you and make it as endur- 
able as the very dregs of bitterness can be made. You 
must try to trust me, my dear child.” For a moment 
just the shadow of a smile played about her eyes. Dr. 
Wayne thought of the sun-glorified, snow-topped peak, 
and was conscious of a new something already bom in 
[ Eleanor’s life and that the pain had made her more 
« beautiful than she had ever been. 

“Dear Doctor, one would doubt you as soon as the 


i8 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


rock of Gibraltar. The bare thought of life is so hard, 
so black, nothing can make any real difference. The 
‘me’ that used to be is dead.” 

There was a ring of conviction in the doctor’s voice 
when, after a long silence, he spoke. “No, Eleanor, 
you are not dead, but have become so acutely alive that 
you are dazed, stunned. By-and-bye you will be 
conscious of new strength, new power of life; from the 
ashes of past pain we are certain to burst a new flame 
if we have any real stuff in us. Phoenix-like we rise 
to something greater, stronger, altogether higher.” 

“The tempest stretches from the steep 
The shadow of its coming; 

The beasts grow tame and near us creep, 

As help were in the human; 

Yet while the cloud-wheels roll and grind 
We spirits tremble under; — 

The hills have echoes; but we find 
No answer for the thunder, 

Be pitiful, O God!” 

Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 


CHAPTER IV 


NEW YORK — THE CHILD 

The crimson curtains framed the soft, young green, 
splashed here and there with yellow and bits of pink, 
for the April sun had wakened the smooth lawns, as 
well as every shrub and bush in the park, into an ardent 
burst of bloom. The air that moved the heavy cur- 
tains was laden with the breath of many blossoms and 
stirred with the thrill of the new life come to the old 
world. 

The faces of the two doctors silhouetted against the 
spring picture framed by the window, stood out in 
strange contrast. 

There was a rustle of heavy silk, the portiere moved. 
“O Doctor, is the awful waiting over? I really can’t 
stand it another minute. Can’t you realize my anxi- 
ety and hurry matters a little? Will Eleanor live? 
poor dear child.” Mrs. Schuyler, fan and scent- 
bottle, sank into a deep hollow of a chair by the 
window. 

“Dr. Wayne was just going to tell you, Mrs. Schuy- 
ler;” it was the great Dr. Thorpe, famous over half a 
continent, who spoke. “The nurse called him or he 
would have come to you at once. It is all over. Your 
daughter will live. We have pulled her through, poor 
young lady.” 

19 


20 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


Mrs. Schuyler raised her eyes and her scent bottle 
toward heaven. “But Doctor, don’t tell me the child 
has lived. Remember you said it would be im- 
possible.” 

As Dr. Wayne came through the doorway with him 
came the first, faint, pitiful cry of a child. He looked 
old and haggard. The cry that followed him was 
dreary and helpless, and fell away into a moan. He 
did not speak, but stood with wide, unseeing eyes, 
looking at the Park in its spring beauty. 

Dr. Thorpe answered rather curtly, “The child is 
alive; barely alive. Life and death, madame, are not 
in human keeping; but it is safe to say the child will 
not live. A few hours at the most will see the end. 
Dr. Wayne will have it taken at once where it can 
have the most scientific care. It must be given all the 
chance there is.” 

Mrs. Schuyler used her scent-bottle before answer- 
ing, “By all means have it taken away at once. It’s 
just like Dr. Wayne’s thoughtfulness. Does Eleanor 
know it is alive ? ” 

Dr. Thorpe picked up his hat as he replied, “Your 
daughter is not yet conscious. She will know time 
enough.” 

“O Doctor,” Mrs. Schuyler gasped, “if it must die, 
why need she know ? It will only be another pain. I 
believe, in spite of everything, she has hoped it might 
live. Why not tell her there was no life? She has 
borne enough, poor child.” 

Dr. Thorpe hesitated at the door. “As you choose, 
madame. You are her mother and should decide 


NEW YORK— THE CHILD 


21 


such a matter. It is not likely the child will live an 
hour. Good morning.” 

The great Dr. Thorpe and his assistant passed down 
the stairs, just as a nurse, carrying a bundle, came 
from the other room. Mrs. Schuyler looked at it 
curiously, a pitiful bit of humanity. 

“ Dr. Wayne, you will tell her it is dead, won’t you?” 

He did not turn, but stood looking out into the 
smiling spring morning as he answered, “Not even to 
save her pain could I be false to Eleanor; but I will 
not contradict what you say.” 

“O Doctor,” and Mrs. Schuyler wiped a tear from 
her eye, “a mother’s love could do anything. You 
have such an uncomfortable conscience. I can tell 
her. What is the child, a girl or a boy?” 

Then he came over and looked at the little bit of 
redness in the white blanket. “It is a girl, poor little 
child of sorrow. She ought to be called Dolores. I 
have never known a person or a cause helped by any- 
thing that was false.” 

Mrs. Schuyler looked at her wee granddaughter 
with only curiosity. The half-hysterical laugh with 
which she answered showed that she had felt the strain 
of the last few hours. “Dolores; what a poetic, 
romantic name! Dear me! it’s as large as the child 
herself. You’ll see that everything is done for her to 
the very end, in a humane manner. We can trust 
you, you are just as one of ourselves. Only have it 
taken quickly so that Eleanor won’t know.” 

Dr. Wayne spoke to the nurse with the bundle as 
Mrs. Schuyler passed into the darkened room. The 


22 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


nurse went down the great stairway with the strange 
little bundle in her arms. 

Within the sick-room the white face scarcely varied 
a tini from the whiteness of the pillow on which it lay. 

Through the curtained window came the sharp sound 
of the closing of a carriage door, the rumble of wheels 
and the brisk step of a horse on the asphalt pavement. 

As Eleanor raised her eyes appealingly to the doctor’s 
face, they were one yearning question. 

“Oh, my dear, darling child, it is all over and you 
have come through beautifully,” Mrs. Schuyler bent 
low that she might screen the doctor from the brown 
eyes. “Dr. Thorpe says you have only to be quiet, 
not even think, and you will be your own bright, strong 
self again.” 

“The child,” Eleanor whispered. The words were 
an echo to the cry of her eyes. The sound of the 
wheels was growing fainter. Mrs. Schuyler stroked 
the little hand that lay white against the coverlet. 

“Life would have been impossible after those awful 
months, Eleanor. It was unreasonable of you to 
allow yourself to hope, and surely it is best as it is.” 
The brown eyes seemed to look her through and 
through, still questioning. As Mrs. Schuyler turned 
away she added, “The child is dead.” 

Eleanor’s eyes gathered all of the shadows in the 
room into their dark depths, then the lashes fell, veiling 
their pain. The sound of the wheels and the horses’ 
hoofs was fast dying. The little gasp, half sob, half 
sigh, that came from the bed went through the shadows 
of the room, out of the curtained window and passed 


NEW YORK— THE CHILD 


23 


away into the sunshine with the noise of the wheels 
and the hurrying horse. 

The throngs on the avenue, gay in spring finery, 
happy with the touch of the new life come to the old 
earth, were parted by the closed carriage that threaded 
its way among them. Mingled with the rattle and 
din of the great city’s life was the helpless, pitiful, first 
cry of a child. 


“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; 
The soul that rises with us, our life’s star, 
Has elsewhere its setting 
And cometh from afar. 

Not in entire forgetfulness, 

Not in utter nakedness, 

But trailing clouds of glory, do we come 
From God, who is our home.” 


CHAPTER V 


NEW YORK — WINTER AND ALONE 

Through the winter blast, Eleanor seemed to be 
looking out into the months that were past since the 
April day when her hope had died as she heard that 
her child had not lived. Life and strength had come 
slowly back, but with them no desire, no hope, no 
ambition. Passively she had acquiesced to her 
mother’s entreaties and Mr. Schuyler’s definite com- 
mands; she had gone to Bar Harbor, Newport and 
Saratoga; worn the gowns and the jewels to dinners 
and f^tes, in simple obedience with a heart that was a 
dead, cold thing. She had been only half conscious, 
only half alive. She had moved as one asleep, except 
for the times when a sudden sharpness of suffering 
had wakened her to a consciousness of her own 
agony. 

Ned Anderson seemed to walk through the glitter of 
the hideous glamor of those days: he had come again 
and again, but she had hardly thought of him; hardly 
noticed, till one day when the glare of fife was burning 
into her soul he had cried to her from the very depths 
of his heart, begged her to let him love her, to become 
his wife that he might have the right to shield, to pro- 
tect her. In her horror she had been almost cruel. 
Her womanhood had cried out that he had no right 
24 


NEW YORK— WINTER AND ALONE 25 

j even to think of such a thing; her sorrow should have 
! been enough to seal his lips, its shadow should have 
been her protection. Dr. Wayne had understood, 
I had pitied her; not with words but with a sympathy 
she could feel. He had come and gone through those 
weeks when the so-called pleasures of life had made 
her so infinitely miserable. 

On the table a jar of crimson roses sent their per- 
fume on the breath of the sad winter morning right to 
her weary heart. With its fragrance came the memory 
of an August morning in the moimtains. Dr. Wayne 
had been wandering in an old garden with her. 
Something had impelled her to say — 

“Do you mind my asking? Have you ever had a 
sorrow, a real true, deep one; anything which made 
life quite different forever?” 

He had stood on the step above and looked dov^m at 
her with an expression she could not interpret; it 
frightened her; she had been ashamed of her question 
and added hastily, “I beg your pardon; I have no 
right to ask such a thing. Please forgive me.” 

He had turned from her and looked toward the 
mountains. Then he had said, very gently, “You 
have a perfect right to ask; the right of a friend. I 
have had my lot and share of sorrow; the common 
kind that comes to most people left alone. But there 
is one, Eleanor, that eclipses all the others; its pain 
and yearning are with me every hour of every day and 
will go with me to the end of my work. At times I am 
a despicable coward; then I preach to myself with 
more vigor than I have ever done to you.” He had 


26 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


held a crimson rose as he spoke, quite unconscious ofj 
the thorn that was piercing his finger. 

She had touched his hand gently, “Please don’t.’ 
I am so sorry, dear friend. I never dreamed of it or 
I would not have asked. I wish I could do some- 
thing for you; you have done so infinitely much for 
me. 

He had looked at her again with the strange look 
in his eyes. “You have done much and the day will 
come when I shall need you to do more. Then may 
I ask you?” 

She remembered how she had answered ardently, 
“Oh, you know you may; you know I will be more 
than ready. It will be something to live for to be of 
use to you.” 

Then suddenly Philomena had come, “Oh, my lady, 
the telegram!” She remembered how she had taken 
it and read, “Philippo Gianco in Bellevue Hospital, 
dying. Come at once. Hunting for his wife; hurt in 
an accident. Fr. Carbonne.” 

She remembered the light in Philomena’ s eyes as 
she had turned to her and said, “He has been looking 
for you. We will go at once. He will have some 
reason to give you and you will find that, after all, 
he did love and love did not fail.” 


Keen and sharp the December blast swept through 
the cross streets from the East River till it met the 
blast from the Hudson; and together they cut fine 
capers, rejoicing that they held the city in their teeth. 


NEW YORK— WINTER AND ALONE 27 


Rattling the windows of the great houses, they swept 
across the park, beating against the panes of the West- 
side houses in a sort of defiance as they stared coldly 
down upon the brown slopes and frozen lawns. 

Eleanor turned from her window, with its gray 
stretch of winter, to where the drawn portiere showed 
Mrs. Schuyler in a creation of white lace, floating 
ribbons and violet cashmere. Her face flushed; she 
spoke hastily, excitedly, “You amaze me, my dear 
Eleanor. I have never seen your father so upset, put 
out, I may say enraged, as since you left the library. 
Think of all he has done for you these ten years, and 
this is the way you are repaying him. Ingratitude! 
and from my own child! It is more than I can bear.’’ 

It was with the utmost tenderness Eleanor answered, 
“There is nothing I would not try to do for you or 
Mr. Schuyler, willingly, gladly, but I cannot marry 
Ned Anderson or any other man. You have no right 
to ask me to; really, you have not.” 

Mrs. Schuyler sank into the same great chair from 
which one day in April she had made the declaration 
of the limitless possibilities of her maternal affection, 
to the great Dr. Thorpe. “When one begins to talk 
of rights,” she laughed, “where in the world would 
you be? It is scarcely wise that the suggestion should 
come from you. What right have you to this home? 
— everything that has made life’s ease and luxury all 
these years? Did Mr. Schuyler ever ask what rights 
you, a penniless child, a stranger, had to the food you 
ate, the clothes you wore?” 

As Eleanor asked, “Mother, was I penniless? Did 


28 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


my father leave me nothing?” her face had much of 
the gray and white of the outside world. 

“Practically penniless — your poor father had none 
of Mr. Schuyler’s common sense and business abilities; 
He was an idealist, a visionary, wrapt up in dreams 
and plans for the bettering of the lower classes. Doctors 
seldom think of their own families. He was much such 
a man as Hubert Wayne is; who has had the good 
sense never to marry or he would leave his wife and 
child unprovided for, as your poor father left us.” 

“But mother, did he leave me nothing, absolutely 
nothing?”— a note of pathos had come into Eleanor’s 
voice of late. 

Mrs. Schuyler smoothed her ribbons. “Just a few 
thousands; we lived on it until I was married; then 
the principal was spent, more for your comfort 
than for mine. For ten years you have been abso- 
lutely dependent upon the generosity, I will not say 
charity, of my husband who has treated you as a 
father would have done. The question now is very 
simple — are you going to accept everything from him 
as his daughter, home, position, even your name, and 
yet refuse to give the obedience due to a father? He 
has put it very plainly; you must do as he wishes — 
marry into one of the oldest families in New York, a 
man with no small fortune, who has been devoted to 
you all your life and will take you in spite of the awful 
things that have happened. Either you must do this 
or give up all you hold as his daughter. What ob- 
jection can you ofter?” 

Eleanor looked over the frozen stretch of Park-land 


NEW YORK— WINTER AND ALONE 29 

where the naked trees stood like tombstones to dead 
hopes. If the voice that answered was low, it was 
not with indecision — “Only that I do not love him; 
that part of me is quite dead. Mother, I never under- 
stood or knew before just how dependent I am. Mr. 
Schuyler has given me much; I am grateful. He has 
a perfect right to discontinue it. I wish, mother, you 
I had explained it, told me I had nothing. I cannot 
and will not marry any man, but I will accept the 
alternative.” 

Mrs. Schuyler pressed her handkerchief to her eyes 
and moaned, “O Eleanor, why will you be so ob- 
stinate, so stubborn; now you know you have nothing, 
how can you hold out? When Mr. Schuyler puts his 
i foot down you know there is no appeal. He has 
never recovered from the scandal, the disgrace you 
brought upon his good old name.” 

Eleanor shrank back as if something had struck 
her; and as she leaned against the window frame her 
i; breath came quick and her face was as if it were part 
i of the winter day. She did not speak, and Mrs. 
Schuyler went on. “Of course, you were only ten 
years old; everyone admired you: he liked people 
to think you were his child; he has always been proud 
of you. Nothing ever annoyed him more than to have 
a reporter find out you were not his own child. When 
the Earl of Eversham visited us at Newport that 
summer, he said one day, ‘I think your daughter is 
strikingly like you,^ my husband was delighted. O 
Eleanor, indeed he has been a father to you; why 
can’t you be a good child? Go down! tell him you 


30 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


will do as he wants you to — you have always been fond 
of Ned and I have no doubt you will grow to love him 
in time. You will have a wedding that will silence 
the old scandal, and, as it were, take the smirch from 
the honorable name of Schuyler.” 

Had the winter blasts that rattled the panes frozen 
Eleanor? Her voice was cold and dismal as the wind 
itself. “That I can never do. The name can scarcely 
be harmed by one who really has no claim to it; and 
all that I have no right to I will give up at once.” 

Mrs. Schuyler became hysterical, “Ring for Jordan. 
I must have help at once,” she cried. 

“Mother, let me help you; indeed I am sorry.” 
Eleanor took one of Mrs. Schuyler’s white jeweled 
hands and bent over her; but the moans and cries 
only became louder. “Leave me! leave me! I can’t 
bear it! You have brought nothing but disgrace and 
misery upon us, and you have no heart; you care for 
nothing!” she gasped between her sobs. Then as 
the faithful Jordan half carried her out of the room 
she cried, “This will lay me up — no one knows for how 
long! Obedience is a child’s religion; you shall not 
come near me again until you are ready to do as I 
tell you, which will be to obey my husband. You 
have nearly killed me; it is high time for me to con- 
sider myself.” 

An hour later when Eleanor entered the library in 
answer to Mr. Schuyler’s staccato “ Come,” she found 
him arranging his papers while he dictated a letter to 
his stenographer. Though he apparently did not 
raise his eyes, he knew that Eleanor had on the walking- 


NEW YORK— WINTER AND ALONE 31 


suit he liked — the same brown as her eyes, which now 
were sad and deep and wide. 

“May I see you for a few minutes?” she asked, 
standing on the other side of his desk. 

The stenographer rose to leave. Mr. Schuyler 
motioned him back to his seat. 

“This is a very busy morning, Eleanor. I have 
given you as much time as I can well spare — I ought 
to be down in my office this minute. I think you 
understood just what I said and meant, did you not?” 

The color dyed Eleanor’s pale cheeks crimson as 
she answered, “Perfectly.” 

Mr. Schuyler went on, as he slipped a packet of 
\ papers into a rubber band, “You need not then tell 
ji me your decision. When one is obstinate — high- 
spirited, I suppose, is a pleasanter word and means 
much the same — it is often hard to yield. You under- 
stand me: by your actions I will understand your 
answer. There are only two courses; you must 
decide which you prefer. Since I have no authority, 
your choice must determine the course you pursue. 
Please, Mr. Wilson, address this letter to the Fargo 
Trust Company — I think we will go on with our 
^ business.” 

Eleanor stood irresolute a moment, then she came 
closer to the desk and, in spite of Wilson’s presence, 
ishe began — “Until to-day I never quite realized how 

il great my debt to you is. The future ” the door 

I opened and Judge Chambers came hurriedly in. 
i Mr. Schuyler turned curtly to her. “Eleanor, 
pressure of business must terminate a further personal 


32 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


interview. You understand — I understand: the mat- 
ter rests in your hands.” 

As the great hall door closed behind her the wintry 
blast brought the first snowflakes of the year and blew 
them into her face. ‘ ‘ Were they feathers from the angels’ 
wings? Facing the world alone, were the angels still 
guarding her? Some poet called them ‘the flowers 
of the storm.’ Could cold and misery, desolation and 
dreariness, which are part of the storm of life, waken 
anything in the heart like blossoms?” 

No carriage waiting, brought the first realizing sense 
of the change her choice must make in life. Neither 
Mr. Schuyler nor her mother believed it possible for her 
to do the thing she was doing. They had not meant 
to turn her out — only to force her to marry Ned Ander- 
son, believing it to be for her happiness. Everyone 
was hurrying down the avenue, somewhere. It was 
too cold to linger, so she hurried on, instinctively passing 
be3^ond the Park, down to where the houses stood more 
closely together. She hesitated a moment at Dr. 
Wayne’s door, then was thankful that it was opened 
by a strange maid, who did not look surprised when 
she gave her childhood’s old name. 

Dr. Wayne listened with his face turned toward the 
window, where the white flakes falling thick and fast 
through the air made a spotted veil, hiding the grayness 
and brownness of rear houses and back yards. Eleanor 
seemed part of the neutral-tinted, storm-bound world 
as she stood there before the office fire. She turned 
to him, her eyes, a blaze of light, shining at him, from 
under her velvet hat ; her browm hair caught the soft 


NEW YORK— WINTER AND ALONE 33 


glow from the fire and gleamed with a golden glory. 
Hubert Wayne remembered Como and the power 
of the September blast and the sun- touched peak, 
glorified and wonderful. 

“Now you know it all, Doctor,” she cried, “do not 
let us talk of it any more. What has the world left for 
me? You once said your work was your life. Why 
cannot I have work ? ” 

“You, Eleanor! God didn’t make you for work.” 
Then he watched the firelight playing about her. 

She sighed as she answered, “He surely did not 
make me for joy or for love either.” She waited, 
thinking he would take her hand, perhaps put his on 
her shoulder; or come to comfort her in some way as 
a father would do; but his hands were thrust deep in 
his pockets and he had turned to the window where 
the snow showed thicker and whiter every minute. 
Once he started — half turned, as if he was going to 
say something; but he only pushed his hands deeper 
down and sighed. 

Eleanor went on, “I have no idea of looking around 
the world for joy and love — that is over forever; so 
work must be my one hope. Cannot you see ? ” 

He did not turn and his voice sounded a strange 
contrast to the dreariness and cold of the world. 
“Work couldn’t live if hope were really dead. You 
cannot now understand that life may hold its very best 
for your future; you are too much hurt by the past 
twelve months’ tragedy to find joy in the very best that 
life could offer. It will not always be so, Eleanor. 
Perhaps, through work, the readjustment may be 
3 


34 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


furthered and helped. But, child, what can you do 
in this common workaday world?” He was looking at 
her now, not as if she were below, but above the 
market value. Eleanor sank into the chair he had long 
ago drawn before the fire for her. Now that the telling 
was over, as were also his office hours, there might be a 
little breathing-space, there in the warmth and com- 
fort, before she faced the storm again. 

“I have really a good education, a physique of aver- 
age strength, two hands that can do some things well 
and learn to do more, and a will to do anything that 
is honest: what more wares can I offer? I feel as if 
I must cry old rags and bottles. Aren’t my wares 
worth anything ? ” she fairly laughed up at him. 

“Worth too much to be thrown upon the market at 
a bargain,” he answered. 

“That is just what you must prevent. Surely you 
must know some work where even my inexperienced 
willingness can be made of account. I wish that I 
might do something for children. In my half-con- 
sciousness that day I am sure I heard my child cry : I 
have heard it since in my fancy continually. If it had 
only lived the world would not be so empty of love.” 

Through a veil of tears her eyes looked bravely at 
him. He started, leaned toward her. “What could 
you do now if you had a child to consider?” 

“Love it and work for it,” she flashed back at him. 

He came and stood before her in the firelight. 
“Eleanor, listen to me,” he began. 

The telephone on the desk rang sharply: he caught 
his breath and turned to answer. 


NEW YORK— WINTER AND ALONE 35 

Eleanor exclaimed, “I know by your face you 
already have an idea. How stupid of it to interrupt 
just this minute.” She waited, hearing the one side 
of the conversation. 

‘^Diphtheria? Who diagnosed it? Then, of 

course, it must be correct. Did you say three 

children? Which are they? Ah! yes; all from 

the baby ward The cases are in quarantine ? 

The whole ward shut off, I suppose? Yes, of 

course you’ll have to have help. I’ll be there shortly. 

You say two light and one severe case. Which 

child is it? Which one? I don’t catch the name 

Did you say Dolores ? Oh, I’ll be there very shortly. 

Good-bye.” 

As he turned to her she saw there was something 
strange in his face, but just then she was absorbed in 
herself and only asked, “Is it really some place where 
help is needed ? and are you going to send me ? Oh, 
do! Let me fancy I have not missed motherhood. 
Has that very bad case a mother?” 

“Poor little thing!” the doctor said under his breath, 
and stood watching the storm as it beat against the 
window. Then he said, thoughtfully. “You couldn’t 
go into quarantine with diphtheria, but you could go 
into the shut-off ward. They have to have help and 
there isn’t any better place to see what the world is — 
the other side of it, I mean — than the Infants’ Refuge.” 

As they hurried along the streets she looked through 
the drifting flakes up at the strong, kind face beside 
her — so serious, so grave. 

“Don’t look so solemn. It’s a wonderful thing to 


36 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


have something to do; something before one. I feel 
the exhilaration; it’s better than all your tonics.” 

Though he tried to smile, he looked very grave as 
he replied, “Did you ever see the paper-weights you 
must turn upside down that you may cause a snow 
storm to sweep down on some impossible lamb or 
lonely castle ? Sometimes the world gets so turned up- 
side down, things get so twisted round, the snow can’t 
help falling, but it gives one a queer sort of feeling to 
be part of it.” 

They were going up some slippery stone steps when 
she flashed back at him, “Perhaps it is that things are 
being put right side up. Who knows what a vocation 
may be discovered ? It is just invigorating. You 
once said I would be more alive than I ever had been. 
It is the truth; I am.” 

As the door closed behind them Eleanor whispered, 
as she caught his arm, “Am I asleep? Is it my dream? 
or do you hear it too?” 

Through the dimness of the long bare hall came the 
cry of a child. 


“Now is winter and now is sorrow, 

No roses but only thorns to-day; 

Thorns will put on roses to-morrow, 

Winter and sorrow scudding away. 

No more winter and no more sorrow to-morrow.” 

Christina Rossetti. 


CHAPTER VI 


THE INSTITUTION — THE PROBLEM 


“O Holy Night, the stars are brightly shining, 

It is the night of the dear Saviour’s birth.” 

The song was tossed out upon the frosty darkness by 
a messenger boy, one time a chorister. It rang through 
the cold streets and fell, a silver flood of melody, upon 
the still darkness of the Baby Ward. Eleanor’s hand 
rested on the coverlet she was tucking in, then moved 
to where the child’s white ones lay clasped. He had 
been devouring her with his black eyes: now his voice, 
thin and piping, seemed to have the ring of the song 
in it. ‘‘Mammy, mammy, mammy,” he cried 
wistfully. She caught him in her arms and the blessed 
song floated about them both, then passed on, and 
only the irregular breathing of twenty-one untucked, 
unkissed babies fell upon the night. She held Barney 
until the white lids covered the hunger in the black 
eyes. There was one child in that ward tucked in and 
kissed by the maternal tenderness of the passion of 
love that the first Christmas brought to human hearts. 

“Is that you, Dr. Wayne?” Eleanor met him as she 
came ’from the dimness of the night ward into the 
lighted hall. “A really, truly, happy Christmas to 
you.” 

“Thank you. Would you think it irony if I too 
37 


38 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


should wish you a happy one?” He was pulling on 
his great, squirrel-lined coat as he spoke. 

Eleanor drew it together as she answered, “Perhaps 
I am learning the A, B, C of true happiness. This is 
the first year I ever understood the real Christmas 
spirit. Why are you here so late ? Is it that diphtheria 
baby ? ” 

“Yes, she is making a fight for life. Christmas, in 
a place like this, is an illustration of the good in men’s 
hearts yet of their amazing limitations — the sorrow 
and pain that toys and Santa Claus can’t reach; yet 
it offers the only solution there is to the great mystery 
of suffering.” 

He looked into her face, all quivering with emotion, 
and repeated softly: 

“Could every time-worn heart but see thee once again, 

A happy human child among the homes of men, 

The age of doubt would pass; the vision of thy face 
Would silently restore the childhood of the race.” 

A doctor in white uniform crossed the hall. “Any 
orders for the night. Doctor? She’ll hardly hold out, 
do you think, until morning?” 

Dr. Wayne turned from the door to answer. “ There’s 
not much of a chance. Dr. Mills. I think I’ll come back 
and see her through the night,” and with a smile to 
Eleanor he passed out into the “Holy Night.” 

Dr. Mills turned to Eleanor. “Do you know Dr. 
Wayne, Miss Gray? He’s a queer chap. That kid 
doesn’t belong to anyone, never had a chance of life 
from the day she came here, a one-day -old scrap; but 
he always has her on the special list and fusses over her 


THE INSTITUTION 


39 


as though she were a millionaire patient with a large, 
adoring circle of relations.” 

To-night Eleanor felt friends with the whole world, 
even the obnoxious Dr. Mills. 

“How old is the little child?” she asked. “Is she 
attractive ? ” 

“Attractive! well, I guess not much! She’s less than 
a year old — eight or nine months, maybe. But it’s not 
only that one : you would think he had been the father 
of ten to see him with the kids sometimes. Most of 
them go right to him and he can stop their music 
quicker than their mammies. I don’t believe he would 
go out to-night for one of his swell patients the way 
he’s going to come for this waif kid. He’s a queer 
chap. Are you on night work. Miss Gray?” 

“No,” Eleanor answered; “I’m just taking Miss 
Kennedy’s place so she can go home because it is 
Christmas eve.” 

“And you didn’t want to go out? I just wish I had 
the chance; but Dr. Wood got off and so this fellow 
had to stay. Just come into the ofhce and we’ll have 
some comfort. I’ve hardly had a look at you and 
you’ve been here a week. The kids will be all right,” 
he added as Eleanor moved toward the ward door. 

Her “Thank you” would have been enough for 
most men, but Dr. Mills’ perceptions were not keen. 
He opened the office door: “Come right along and 
we’ll have a good time too.” 

“This is my place,” Eleanor said, as she passed into 
the shadow of the ward, where from a dark comer a 
wild, frightened cry came to her. The child had come 


40 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


in just before dark. Eleanor had not been in the ward 
and afterward she had not noticed her save that she 
was lying with her face hidden. Her chart-board said, 
“Helen Foster, eighteen months. Disease none; 
condition, good; health, perfect.” As she bent over 
the tiny cot, the child shrank from her; with caressing 
touch she smoothed the rumpled bed. The cries had 
stopped as soon as she came near, apparently more 
from terror than satisfaction. Now she lay with wide 
eyes watching Eleanor, then, as if discerning the 
mother spirit for which her little heart was breaking, 
she reached up imploring arms, crying, “Take, take 
baby.” 

As Eleanor held the frightened, trembling child and 
felt the warm breath upon her cheek, the soft little arms 
clinging about her neck, all her mother love went out 
to the baby who was as unlike the typical institution 
child as Eleanor was unlike the other nurses in the 
ward. 

The child’s eyes were full of soul, blue and deep; 
she was soft and plump and pink, with dimpled arms 
and neck and cheeks, a tiny mouth already smiling up 
at Eleanor as she nestled close in her arms. She was 
just a rosebud of a baby and Eleanor found herself 
saying all kinds of foolish nothings while her brown eyes 
and the child’s great blue ones said unutterable things 
to each other. Soon the long lashes lay on the rosy 
cheeks. Eleanor watched the little sleeping face upon 
her breast in its exquisite refinement and beauty. 
The unbleached cotton gown was much too large and 
fell away from the pretty throat. 


THE INSTITUTION 


41 


^‘Out in the world, poor, sensitive baby, what will 
you do with your big heart ? ” 

She laid her gently in the little bed, still smiling, 
sweetly sleeping. She covered her carefully, for the 
hour was late, the fires were low and the ward was 
cold. Then she passed from bed to bed, tucking in 
the wee scraps of humanity which the tide of a great 
city brings to a shelter that never refuses to make a 
place for whatever comes. Barney’s great black 
eyes opened and he whispered in his solemn, serious 
way, “Mammy, mammy.” Had he ever known joy? 
Foolish, light-hearted merriment? Was this child- 
life? 

She looked down the two rows of beds, like doll’s 
boxes on a toy shop shelf. “They sleep in rows, are 
dressed in rows, fed in rows — but one cannot love in 
rows.” Out beyond was a city of homes where babies 
had wealth of toys and love; and these were their 
brothers and sisters. And there was that other baby, 
out in the Quarantine Ward fighting for life — and 
this was Christmas night! 

“Well, if you aren’t the best thing to let me off. I’ve 
just had a dandy time. We all went to my cousin’s, 
and I tell you we raised the roof. Haven’t you had 
anything doing while I was off ? ” Miss Kennedy was 
fastening her uniform as she talked. Eleanor involun- 
tarily moved toward the bed where the pretty new 
baby lay, as if to shield her from the rattle of the words 
as she said, “It has been very quiet here; everyone 
has been good. This poor little new child wakened 
up dreadfully frightened.” 


42 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


Miss Kennedy looked down at the sleeping baby. 
“I had to shut her up just before I left. She’s one of 
the kind that’s sure to make a row; her mother’s one 
of the soft sort. Their children always make the 
worst fuss. She got leave in the office to bring the 
child right to the ward herself. Then she said, ‘It is 
the first time baby and I were ever parted for a night. 
You’ll be very gentle with her, nurse; she’s never had 
a harsh word in her life,’ and a lot more such palaver. 
I see you gave the kid something. You have to come 
to it; it’s the only way.” 

“Oh, please do not talk right over her. See! she’s 
stirring now,” Eleanor whispered. “It must be terrible 
to be so tiny, so helpless and feel the fright and lone- 
liness of the world.” 

The child threw one little dimpled hand over her 
head and her rosy mouth puckered into a smile, but she 
went on sleeping. “Do come into the dining-room,” 
Eleanor urged. 

Miss Kennedy rose good-naturedly. “Land! you’re 
most as bad as the mother.” She stood looking down 
at the sleeping child as she added, “She is a pretty 
kid; just like a doll.” As she spoke she twirled in 
the air a pencil fastened to a bit of ribbon, and as she 
turned, the ribbon yielding to the strain, broke. The 
pencil, charged with the force of the circular motion, 
flew over, struck the baby across the eyes and nose. 
With a frightened cry she sprang up, her wide eyes 
searching the unfamiliar place for cause or for some 
loving compensation, while the pain made her cry 
bitterly. Instantly the nurse laid a restraining hand 


THE INSTITUTION 


43 


upon the little shoulder and laid her down. “There 
now, it’s all over, there’s no ice to cut. You just lie 
down and shut off that music.” 

The blue eyes that looked searchingly up into Miss 
Kennedy’s face became deeper with new terror. Miss 
Kennedy drew up the covers, not roughly, but emphatic- 
ally. “Yes, my lady, I’m the friend you met before. 
I see you don’t forget an introduction. Now shut up, 
right off!” 

Eleanor was by the frantic child, an arm protectingly 
about her while she held both baby hands in hers. 
“Miss Kennedy, do please let me quiet her. She’s 
terribly frightened; any one when they were asleep 
would be with such a knock — and right in the face, 
too. There now, darling, nothing will hurt you; you 
are quite safe. We’ll put some cold water on your poor 
little nose. Just see how it is swelling already! Poor, 
dear baby!” 

But there was no leaving the child for water or 
any other device. The little arms seemed like bands 
of iron as they closed tightly about her neck; the child 
clung to her in desperate terror. Eleanor took her 
in her arms and soothed her as a mother might. 

“Well, if you ain’t as bad as the kid’s mother! 
We’ll never get her broken in if you go on like that. 
Don’t you know that you mustn’t hold children? It’s 
one of the rules.” Miss Kennedy was angry, but 
Eleanor did not hear her; she was whispering sweet 
nothings to the trembling baby, who had stopped 
screaming, but caught her breath in long gasps with 
heart-breaking little sobs. 


44 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


A shaft of light that fell across the darkness of the 
ward where the door opened into the hall was suddenly 
darkened, and Dr. Mills’ voice said, “ Can’t you come 
to the office. Miss Kennedy?” Then he looked at the 
two flushed faces of the nurses and read the story. 

“What is all this row about, anyway? I never 
heard any of your children go on in this way before. 
Can’t you keep them quiet ? ” 

“If Miss Gray will give me a chance. She forgets 
that I’m in charge of the ward to-night, just the same 
as she forgets other rules, about nurses holding children 
and spoiling and petting the pretty ones.” 

Indignation shone in Eleanor’s brown eyes, but her 
voice was low as she said, “ Surely it cannot be against 
the rules of the place that is the home for little helpless 
babies who have no other home, to be a little kind and 
tender to a pitiful, helpless child, half frightened to 
death by the strangeness of the awful change that 
has come into her little life ? Dr. Wayne would certainly 
say it might bring real harm to a child to be suddenly 
wakened from her sleep. The first night away from 
her mother, when everything is so new, so awfully 
changed, surely a little care could not be in the least 
out of the way.” 

The doctor and the nurse exchanged glances. His 
air was supercilious as he said, “The medical directors 
have nothing to do with the management or discipline 
of the children. You have not had as much experience 
in your whole life as Miss Kennedy has had in one week. 
She is in charge here. You will have to hand over the 
patient. We are quite able to stop that noise without 


THE INSTITUTION 


45 

help.” He forcibly loosened the little clinging arms 
and the child burst into a frantic scream of terror. 

Eleanor lost all personal feeling. There was nothing 
in the world she would not have done for the privilege 
of holding that trembling, shrinking, frightened child 
till she could have soothed her to sleep. 

“Doctor, I beg you, let me put her to bed. She will 
be quiet at once; don’t let her be so terrified. It is 
Christmas night, Dr. Mills.” 

But the doctor replied curtly, “This is as good a 
time as any other to learn to obey. I must remind you, 
you are not on duty in this ward at present. You will 
have to hand the patient over to the nurse in charge.” 

Eleanor stood, whiter than the Christmas snow that 
lay upon the roofs; she trembled in a blind rage of 
indignation. 

The child’s strength measured against the woman’s 
made a short, ill-matched struggle; but the agony in 
the great wide eyes was indelibly stamped upon Eleanor’s 
memory; the pitiful weakness of the imploring baby 
hands, the frantic cries which Miss Kennedy soon 
stifled with her apron, while she stopped for a joke 
with the doctor. 

Why she touched the squirrel-lined coat hanging in 
the hall and drew from it a sense of help and pro- 
tection, she did not know. He could understand as 
he worked out there in the Quarantine Ward, helping 
the little child make a fight for life. He seemed to 
stand for the ideals of life; the pains that were worse 
than blows, he saw and knew because he too had 
suffered: and so he gave all his life to relieve, to give 


46 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


comfort. She must not tell him of to-night; he could 
really do nothing. How could it be helped? How 
few people could even understand the cruelty that 
would not strike or starve, yet could kill. Those were 
not the cries of anger or temper that came from the 
little dark linen-room at the end of the ward, but of 
fright and pain, unnecessary pain. O God, there 
is enough of unavoidable pain for every heart: why, 
because one has a greater capacity for feeling should it 
be tortured to the limit of its endurance ? Poor little 
Barney had probably never been happy, really, truly 
joyously happy; his miss was an unconscious ache. 
But the other child, the little Helen Foster, eighteen 
months — her name, her age was all anyone knew. 
Her face told the rest to those w’ho could read its little 
story, and those who could not, should they be judged 
for what they could not see? She had been loved, 
grown in the sunshine of love, all her eighteen months, 
and the darkness without it, brought her unknown 
terrors. Of course she must adjust herself. Poor 
baby! Tenderly and quietly she could be helped to 
do so. Yet, should she, because she could, suffer 
more, because her dower of birth was finer material of 
which to make her life, because she had already had more 
than the other poor little creatures who lay in the two 
rows of white beds? Should she not have more now? 
Should she not be considered, helped, comforted ? Is 
there not love enough in human hearts that every day 
endures the dark of a world without love? — misery 
endured passively or resentfully, consciously or uncon- 
sciously. 


THE INSTITUTION 


47 


Eleanor pressed her face against the window-pane 
and looked out into the night where through the dark 
the silent stars kept watch. She heard the helpless, 
pitiful cries stop suddenly, then she covered her face 
with her hands and sobbed bitter tears, such as she had 
never shed for her own pain, even at Como. 

In the gray of the early morning, on her way to the 
ward, she found Dr. Wayne standing in the hall, coat 
and hat in hand, ready to go. Perhaps he had been 
waiting. 

“Good morning, nurse. Merry Christmas!” he 
said cheerily. Then something in her white face made 
him stop. Still holding her hand he flashed upon her 
a smile of such tender, loving sympathy that, looking 
at him, she felt the Christmas dawn break in her heart. 

“A happy Christmas yours should surely be,” she 
said, smiling back at him. “How is the little patient? 
Have you been working all night ? ” She had intended 
to add, “just for the miserable life of one little waif,” 
but she couldn’t with those eyes looking right through 
her. 

“No, no,” he said, “not all night. The membrane 
broke soon after one o’clock; then it was easy. I 
have had a bath, a little sleep and am^ ready for a 
glorious day.” Still holding her hand, still looking at 
her, he added, “I think the baby will live.” 

After a pause he continued, “Eleanor, when I went 
to the office last night I found Mr. Schuyler waiting. 
He wanted me to let you know that Ned Anderson 
dines with them to-night. If you should come back 
in time for dinner you would find a warm welcome. 


48 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


Your mother wanted you to know this; your mother, 
Eleanor, think of her: and you are only twenty-two— 
life is before, not behind you. If you go back every- 
thing is waiting; comforts, luxury, home and love. 
There is only one hard condition, and, perhaps, con^ 
sidering what you have endured these last few days 
it would not seem so hard.” 

The tears would come, but she still kept her eyes on 
his, drinking in the sympathy she found there as a 
thirsty man from an oasis in a desert. 

“Mother, dear mother, could I see her? This is 
Christmas Day. Could I?” she asked anxiously. 

He waited a minute and then said as if it hurt him 
to say it, “No, Eleanor, unless you choose as she wishes 
she thinks it better not. They close the house and 
sail next Saturday; they spend the winter in Italy.” 

“Italy!” she gasped; “never, never, while I live 
this life a thousand times.” 

His voice was very tender when he answered: 
“Choosing as you are doing, you are cutting yourself 
off from every bit of the old life. No one knows you 
are here; the world will suppose you have gone with 
them to Italy. Consider carefully. You are giving up 
every one and everything.” 

“Oh, no,” she said, smiling from under her wet 
lashes, “not everyone while you are my friend. If my 
own mother does not want to see me, it at least gives 
me the comfort of knowing she is not grieving or 
yearning or she would not put away the chance of just 
a word of love. No, I would rather dine with the nurses 
here in the basement than in the old dining-room 


THE INSTITUTION 


49 


with all its silver and glass and luxury and poor Ned. 
This is the decision once for all: please let them know 
and tell them I wish them every Christmas blessing.’’ 

“Will you dine with us?” he said very gently. “My 
sister really wants it and the children told me to say 
there is a great surprise coming on the tree and you 
must not disappoint them. There will be no one there 
but ourselves. Will you come?” 

“How kind of Mrs. Barnard! Indeed I would love 
to.” She went back into the ward to meet the work 
of the day with a strange sense of weakness and 
strength, of pain and joy. It was the hour of con- 
fusion, when, the long night over, life has not yet 
readjusted itself to the new conditions of the day. In 
the little tumbled bed under the new chart, with half 
closed eyes, little Helen lay. She did not move. 
Eleanor bent over her, but the child made no cry. 

“Through the long centuries, 

Lives meet and part; 

Stars rise and kingdoms fade; 

Art follows art — 

Yet the white Christ life 
Lives in the world’s heart.” 


CHAPTER VII 


CHRISTMAS — HAPPINESS 

How the stars twinkled through the sharp, clear 
night air! The snow creaked and squeaked music- 
ally as a sleigh passed swiftly over it; the rows of 
houses standing dark against the night threw light 
and radiance from every window out into the snowy 
street. It was as if every house was a home and every 
home rejoicing that it was Christmas. Strains of 
music, snatches of songs, the jingle of bells, blended 
together in a merry, rhythmic, Christmas soimd. The 
great city was thrilled with joy and it sank into Elean- 
or’s heart and made her eyes glow with the old light as 
she slipped her hand into Hubert Wayne’s arm and 
nestled down in Mrs. Barnard’s big comfortable 
sleigh. 

‘‘I am so happy, in spite of everything; I feel the 
joy of a child. Is it because I am heartless? I am 
sure I do not forget, but somehow, to-night, I do not 
seem to mind. I never before saw New York beauti- 
ful in snow; to-morrow it will be soiled and ugly, 
but to-night it is wonderful. The stars seem almost 
winking, the earth, the sky, everything knows it is 
Christmas.” 

He covered her little hand with the fur robe and 
looked dovm with an interested face as he answered, 
50 


CHRISTMAS NIGHT 


51 


“It’s not heartlessness, Eleanor; it’s only a part of the 
readjustment through your work. You have too 
strong a nature not to rebound. It’s because you have 
the kind of heart you have that you can feel the child- 
like thrill which the blessed feast must bring to every- 
one fortunate enough to keep his childlikeness in 
spite of the years.” 

As the sleigh rounded a comer Hubert Wayne called, 
“A merry Christmas,” to a burly policeman standing 
on the curb playing with a spray of holly, who turned 
his ruddy face and said with a capacious smile, “The 
best of Christmases to you, sir, and to your lady.” 
Eleanor laughed as the sleigh sped on, but Dr. Wayne 
seemed not to have heard; his face was averted. 

As the great hall door was opened the light from 
within made a golden way which Eleanor trod joy- 
ously, much as one would enter fairyland. Surely it 
was magic, it was another realm: fragrance, beauty, 
melody and radiant streams of light from Christmas 
candles, and in it all Mrs. Barnard’s gentle, loving 
welcome. Two happy, fair-haired children came in, 
dancing and singing with the very joy of being alive. 

She laid her wraps in the great upper room where the 
shaded lights, rich carpets and warm curtains brought 
back memories of by-gone days. Dorothy, dancing 
on one foot and then on the other, her blue eyes beaming 
and her yellow hair shining, told of the joys yet to be: 
“Mother says she just wishes Santa Claus would 
come to-night ’cause there’s so many people here who 
ought to have the very best kind of a time, ’specially 
as long as we’ve got a baby. Katryn and I have each 


52 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


got a present for the baby. Mother says Christmas 
should be a happy time for every baby in the world.” 

As Eleanor drew off her gloves she asked, “Where 
did you get a baby ? Whose is it ? ” 

Six-year-old Kathryn, sitting on the hearth-rug in 
the firelight, answered eagerly, “That’s the baby 
that belonged to the story. Once upon a time the 
baby’s father went away from his home, a long way 
off, and he got into a great big trouble. Mother says 
we wouldn’t understand; but he couldn’t come back. 
Then Phillippo came into the world and his mother 
felt so sad because he didn’t have any father there to 
be glad or to do anything for him and everybody said 
such bad things about his father, so she came far 
away and brought Phillippo with her; and one day 
she got word, just as if the fairies told her, to go to a 
big hospital and there she found Phillippo’s father: 
— he had been hunting all over the world for his baby 
and his Philo mena and he was dying! — the doctor 
said he was dying!” 

Dorothy, who had been squeezing Eleanor’s hand 
and kissing it rapturously, interrupted: “But he 
didn’t die, he didn’t at all; he was just so happy to 
see them he began to get better right off and then he 
got work to do, and now they have a little home way off 
where they can see the river. It’s just a big room and 
a tiny, wee, little one, but Philomena says where you can 
see the sky and the water you can always be at home.” 

Eleanor sitting on the couch, drew the two children 
to her as she said, “Yes, it’s a beautiful story. I’ve 
heard it before; but I’d like to know how this last 


CHRISTMAS NIGHT 


53 

chapter came to happen, that Phillippo and Philomena 
and the baby should be here to-night ? ” 

Katryn answered enthusiastically, “Oh, that’s the 
best part of it. Uncle Hubert took us both in the 
sleigh yesterday morning, way over to the river to see 
their little home and ask them to come and bring the 
baby to our tree: they are taking dinner down-stairs 
with the servants now. They have all invited their 
relations and friends, and there are ever so many 
children, but Phillippo is the only really, truly baby.” 

Dorothy suddenly gasped with four-year-old horror, 
“O Katryn, it was a secret! we promised not to 
tell; mother and Uncle Hubert wanted to s’prise you. 
Don’t you think you could forget ? I am a splendid 
forgetter and so is Katryn; when we can’t keep secrets 
inside our hearts any longer we tell them and then we 
promise to forget in time to be s’ prised — and if you 
should think a great deal about the s’prise you’d for- 
get all about the secret.” 

Eleanor kissed each anxious, rosy face as she an- 
swered, “I’ll think so hard about being surprised and 
I’ll be so glad all the time to know they’re down-stairs 
having such a good time, that I’m sure it will make up 
for the secret having squeezed itself out.” 

“There’s mother calling. She doesn’t want us to 
keep you; she wants some of you herself. Isn’t it good 
there’s just two of us ’cause everybody we love has 
just two hands, one for each of us, and the stairway is 
just wide enough for three,” Katryn said, as she jumped 
from step to step; and Dorothy added, “Everything’s 
just right in the world. We’re to have dinner just as 


54 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


if we were grown up to-night — that’s why it’s going 
to be right away. We don’t want to be rude, but let’s 
eat quickly and get dinner over, for it’s Christmas 
and we want the tree.” 

At last the dinner was over; that delicious, happy 
home dinner, whose comfort and cheer Eleanor would 
keep through many a day: and in the light of the great 
tree stood the group of children, rich and poor, young 
and old, laughing, dancing and happy. 

Dorothy caught Mrs. Barnard’s hand. ‘‘Mother 
dear, do you love me?” she asked, looking up with 
sparkling, radiant eyes as she heard the answer — 
“Yes, darling; indeed I love you; why should you 
ask — do you doubt it?” With a happy, merry laugh 
the child cried, “Oh, mother dear, I knew you did, I 
just wanted to hear you say it.” 

As Eleanor took Phillippo in her arms and his great 
dark eyes smiled at her, his mother, watching with 
adoring love, whispered to his father, “She is like the 
Madonna; she ever was, and now with the baby, it’s 
a holy Christmas picture that she makes.” 

Mrs. Barnard touched the piano and the two children 
sang with shrill, ardent voices: 

“ Come to the manger in Bethlehem, 

For a sweet child lies therein; 

A little child with a heart so large 
It takes the whole world in.” 

The other children gathered timidly about the two 
little singers, joining in as they could with the song: 
then they made a merry circle all about the tree singing 
the old carol, “God rest ye, merry gentlemen.” As 


CHRISTMAS NIGHT 


55 


the tapers burned brighter the joy in the great rooms 
seemed to rise higher and grow fuller and stronger 
till it thrilled with the joy the angels brought to earth 
when long ago they said, “Good will to men.” Then 
little Dorothy turned in consternation to her mother, 
“Uncle Hubert’s gone; he promised to give us this 
time.” For a moment a shadow seemed to fall across 
the brightness, then Katryn said reassuringly, “Uncle 
Hubert wouldn’t break a promise; if he had to go he’d 
tell us about it first.” 

A sudden blast of a horn, the jingle of bells, and a 
crimson-coated, fur-trimmed Santa Claus was standing 
in the light of the Christmas candles. With ecstatic 
screams the children jumped about him and good old 
Christmas mirth for an hour lifted the heavy burdens, 
glorified the crosses that the years had brought to 
those, who in the light of the Christmas tree, filled 
with its joy, became again like little children. Such 
merry, joyous laughter; such bright, ringing carols; 
such gifts, each one speaking of loving thoughts, of 
special, personal care. 

I Though, like Philomena, many of the servants were 
far from home, they forgot it in the thrill that warmed 
I their hearts and held them with the great bond of 
I brotherhood. The lame boy who sold papers in the 
I little shop area on the avenue, as he thumped away on 
I his crutches turned back for one last look at the room 
I with its great tree still shining with Christmas fruit, 
j the fire crackling on the hearth touching with its rosy 
! glow the statues, the pictures, the carved furniture, 

I and said to the housemaid’s little sister, “Ain’t you 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


56 

glowin’ inside and out? Don’t Christmas make you 
good right through to the very inside of you?” 

And she answered with a beaming smile, “I ain’t 
never felt anything like it before in all my life: it seems 
as if the angels was here.” 

Then they were all gone. Before the library fire 
there was a Christmas cake and wassail. 

As Dorothy sank back in her little rocking-chair, 
nibbling a tiny sugar plum she exclaimed, “I’m so 
glad I’m a little girl; I don’t know what I’ll do when 
I grow up and Christmas comes.” 

Katryn answered readily from her comer of the 
hearth-rug, “Why, Dorothy, don’t let your heart grow 
up and then it will be just the same as it is now.” 

Eleanor’s brown eyes had lost all their shadows; 
they were as sparkling and childlike as the children’s 
blue ones as she said: “That’s just the secret of 
life, Katryn; only sometimes it’s pretty hard to live 
up to such principles — at least a little while ago I 
thought it was, but to see so many people happy makes 
one’s heart grow young.” 

Dorothy turned sparkling blue eyes upon her. “Oh, 
you never were old,” she said. “But weren’t you 
frightened to-night when Uncle Hubert disappeared? 
I never thought he’d make such a jolly Santa Claus. 
Don’t you suppose it’s because you never had any 
trouble. Uncle Hubert, you can be so nice and funny ? ” 
she added as she climbed upon his knee. 

As he pushed back the child’s yellow hair his laugh- 
ing eyes certainly did not look as if they had ever known 
grief. 


CHRISTMAS NIGHT 


57 


‘‘You and Katryn have been trying to teach me not 
to grow up ever since you came into the world. I’d 
be a poor kind of a chap if I couldn’t learn a simple 
lesson like that from two such wise teachers.” 

“Oh, you are such a dear!” the child cried, both 
arms tight about his neck, her soft cheek against his. 

The sleigh was at the door; there wasn’t even a 
glove button left unfastened to give the children an 
excuse for keeping her another minute. Mrs. Barnard 
kissed her tenderly on first one cheek and then on 
the other as she said, “You will come often, dear; 
though we are not gay, perhaps even rather dull when 
it is not Christmas, yet remember, every day of the 
year ‘ Still is the Christ Child here.’ It will make my 
babies very happy if you will come, for they love you 
j so; and their mother will always have a welcome 
■ waiting and be very glad to see you. May the blessed 
Christmas joy stay with you, dear.” 

The children stood on the stair waving their last good- 
! bye. Eleanor turned for one last look at the bright 
I picture: the two figures in their pretty white frocks, 
I their fair hair, sparkling eyes and bright cheeks, going 
' slowly backward up the stairs, waving and singing: — 

“ But the heart of the world is far too small 
To take in that little child; 

It turns him away, there is no room 
For his face so sweet and mild, 

They would cast him out if they only could, 

To the storm so rude and wild.” 

Little Phillippo’s shining eyes, the lame boy’s wan, 
happy face, the housemaid’s little sister’s beaming joy, 


S8 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


and the whole band of commonplace but radiant, 
happy children seemed a contradiction to the spirit 
of the children’s song. Eleanor stood a moment 
before turning to the night where the stars were still 
shining, that she might catch another line, a joyful 
something to take with her. They had reached the 
top of the stairway but their carol floated back through 
the lighted hall with its festoons of evergreens, passed 
the gentle mother standing in the light with a smiling 
farewell, out into Eleanor’s waiting heart. 

“ The more the cold world turns Him out 
The more we will take Him in; 

When our hearts are full of the Holy Child 
There will be no room for sin.” 


CHAPTER VIII 


SEQUEL TO CHRISTMAS EVE — DOLORES 

“Make the two end beds ready for transfer cases. 
Dr. Mills has just telephoned that Abraham and 
Maggie are to go down to the ward. The other 
children will be here at once. Please be as quick as 
you can, Miss Gray.” The nurse in charge of the 
infirmary shook down the thermometer as she spoke 
and passed across to a tiny white bed where a wee 
scrap of humanity lay. 

Eleanor opened the two bed cribs and began pre- 
paring them for the newcomers. She said, “Here 
one soon learns that the place one fills is only one’s 
own property so long as one can hold it. Doesn’t it 
make you feel solemn. Miss Ford?” 

There had been some trouble in the office of which 
Eleanor knew nothing. Dr. Mills had made it quite 
plain that the new ward assistant was not acceptable. 
Dr. Wayne’s influence had brought about the transfer. 
This had happened soon after Christmas. The change 
from Miss Kennedy’s reign to that of the trained 
nurse. Miss Ford, a person of education, had been 
most acceptable and life had been easier for a week 
past. 

Miss Ford looked at the serious face with its wistful 
eyes as she said, “Your argument is on a false basis, 
59 


6o 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


Miss Gray. Don’t forget your draw-sheet and re- 
member also one has to have a place before one can 
leave it. These little mortals have no place in this 
world however it may be in the other. It’s just like 
apples in a barrel — whichever fits the best goes and 
the overflow is poured into something else.” 

As Eleanor drew the draw-sheet tightly across the lit- 
tle mattress she said, “I can’t get over the sadness of it. 
We all of us have to meet grief and pain and sorrow 
on our way through life: but not to be able to look 
back to a childhood of joy and love must be awful. 
No matter what comes after, nothing can quite make 
up for it.” 

Miss Ford looked at the thermometer and recorded 
on the chart then she replied, “You have many 

things to learn. Miss Gray. Some of them you’ll find 
harder than bed-making. The very first one is that 
we are not all made of the same stuff and nothing is 
more different than our power of feeling. Do you 
suppose it will make any appreciable difference to 
Abraham that he is suddenly taken from all that has 
bounded his life for six months, a quarter of his exist- 
ence — the people, the things, the circumstances, the 
round of detail that after all is the life of a baby ? Do 
you suppose that he will notice, except in a vague, stupid 
way, that he has missed out of his life all that he has 
depended upon? He may miss certain nice- tasting 
things allowed in the infirmary and not in the ward: 
that will be all. With you a change of life would mean 
the uprooting of everything, but he has no roots.” 

“But,” Eleanor persisted, “he may miss more than 


SEQUEL TO CHRISTMAS EVE 6i 


he has the power to express; more than he knows 
himself. His face will show it and it will be indelibly 
stamped upon him — the pain, the miss of looking for 
what he cannot find — ^as it is stamped upon him now 
that he never had a real place of his own since he came 
: into the world. The assurance which love gives to 
childhood is so pathetically absent in his life. The 
I very patience that is bom of the endurance of imnoticed 
pain, in its silence says so much. Think of a sick baby 
at home; the tenderness that tries to lighten an hour 
of weary confinement, and if the child is suffering, the 
loving sympathy that tries to find compensation is 
limitless. Here, to suffer is so much the common lot: 
j it is the business of life without sympathy.” 

There was a curious little smile in Miss Ford’s 
j eyes as she said — 

' ‘‘Is not the very effort to alleviate, a proof of sym- 
I pathy much more than a lot of words? I do hope 
, that you are not sentimental, Miss Gray. This is no 
I place for it. Babies must be washed, dressed, fed and 
1 kept in some sort of order if they are to have any chance 
! at all. The grind of the work knocks out any senti- 
ment. It’s beginning life in earnest here.” 

Eleanor put the last pillow in place and turned her 
face, trembling with strange emotion, to Miss Ford as 
she said, “ Oh, think of a little child trying to take hold 
of life — so tiny, so weak, trying to grasp the conditions 
that centuries have bound about the big world; with 
no mother’s loving arms or tender breast to serve for 
the first efforts — ^nothing softer or more responsive 
than a polished floor or the iron bars of a bed. The 


62 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


very hopelessness of ever being able to grasp the vast- 
ness of life gives to them a vagueness, robs them of all 
that is personal, individual, before they are able to 
speak.” 

Miss Ford smiled indulgently. “I don’t believe 
you know much of the world. Wait awhile; you will 
either learn a few things or you will become a lecturer. 
Your ardor will either bum you up or it will cool off. 
Perhaps the cooling process has a rather solidifying 
effect upon the heart, but it has to come to every one 
sooner or later. Will you make the children ready to 
go down-stairs? Remember, you are at liberty to 
give their hearts and minds all the preparation you 
choose so long as it does not interfere with their face 
and hands being clean. We’ve a pretty bad case coming 
up. They must be ready to go, for we have all we 
can do.” 

The very touch of Eleanor’s finger-tips must have 
spoken to the stolid little creatures. Abraham, stand- 
ing before her, every line of his poor little body that 
should have been straight, twisted into ludicrous curves 
by the cruel enemy of the poor child — rickets — stroked 
her sleeve with his wan little hand and twisted his 
wizened face into a serious smile that beyond all 
question was meant for approval. Maggie’s beady 
eyes followed her every motion. Then, without 
rhyme or reason, opening her cavernous mouth she 
sent forth a wild, harsh wail. Had the gentle touch 
set some hitherto unknown heart-strings vibrating? 

Miss Kennedy, passing through the dressing-room 
as she carried a little, white, still figure to the ward. 


SEQUEL TO CHRISTMAS EVE 


63 


said in a tone of irony, “Be careful! Don’t hurt the 
child, Miss Gray. Even if she is naughty you cannot 
tell what her feelings may be.” 

When Eleanor brought the children into the ward 
ready to be transferred, a few minutes later, they were 
both clinging to her. She overheard Dr. Mills say, 
as he turned from the bed where Miss Kennedy had 
laid the transferred case, “ I will send word to the office 
to have the mother notified. Doubt if she gets here 
before the kid turns her toes up to the daisies.” 

Miss Kennedy, taking the two reluctant children, 
followed him out of the ward. 

Eleanor turned to the bed where the sick child lay. 
The tiny face had the pallor of death, and about the 
mouth and eyes were the deep shadows that are always 
the forecast of the great shadow. The eyes were 
wide and blue and deep; the features regular; the 
hair had all been cut off. Eleanor turned to the chart 
and read: 

Helen Foster Eighteen months. 

. ( Nostalgia 

Diagnosis ^ . 

/ Enterocolitis 

Danger List. 

Then this was the child with the big heart, the 
sensitive nature and the beautiful face — the new 
patient of Christmas Eve and to-day was January 
sixth — ^Little Christmas. Two weeks had done this! 
Here she lay dying — done to death. With a rush came 
the memories of the old-time Twelfth Night; the 
festivities and fetes which even of late years had been a 
regular feature of the winter season at the Schuyler 


64 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


mansion. And this was Twelfth Night and she was 
alone, quite alone, in the great world. 

Oh! the desolation of life! No wonder she could 
feel for these children; she was their sister in sorrow 
and misery. It gave her the power to understand. 
This little child had lost all the happy, joyous heritage 
of child life and it was killing her, breaking her heart. 
Mercifully she could die; but she, Eleanor, must live 
on and on — the years reached out endlessly — just to 
suffer. She would always be part of the pain of life 
because her own agony had quickened her to the com- 
prehension of all pain, so that she could understand. 
She turned to see two serious eyes watching her with 
solemn intensity. The other transfer case — had it 
ever smiled? ’Twas a ghost of a child with wistful 
dark eyes. The chart-board read: 

Dolores Payne Nine months 

Then this was the child Dr. Wayne had worked over, 
had struggled to save. It certainly was not her beauty, 
nothing but her need that had appealed to him. Elea- 
nor bent over her. “He helped you, baby, and he 
has helped me. Because of what we both owe to him, 
we ought to be good friends.’’ As she took the baby 
hand she noticed how beautifully formed it was, but 
the child drew it quickly away with a gesture of digni- 
fied reserve. “You are a funny unfriendly little 
creature,” Eleanor said, but already the child was 
holding out her hand, not to Eleanor but to some one 
beyond. Turning, Eleanor saw Dr. Wayne was 
coming toward them, looking at them both with such a 


SEQUEL TO CHRISTMAS EVE 65 

strange expression, that she listened, expecting to hear 
some startling news, but he only took the little hand 
that was solemnly put into his and looked question- 
ingly down into Eleanor’s face. She felt there was 
something she did not understand; then decided it 
was his affection for the child for whom he had done 
so much, that made him different. He did not speak, 
so Eleanor said, “I’ve just met your little patient, 
but she will not make friends with me. She is an odd, 
serious little creature, but she knows and condescends 
to bestow her favor upon you. But she has had enough 
of your attention. Aren’t you going to see that little 
child opposite?” 

Eleanor stepped across to the bed. Dr. Wayne, 
stooping, stroked Dolores’ little white cheek and said 
something to her; the child kept her strange dark eyes 
riveted upon his face. They never swerved from him 
even when he had turned to join Miss Ford and Dr. 
Mills at the little bed opposite where life was ebbing 
fast. He asked quick, clear, comprehensive questions, 
reading the chart and examining the child. 

Eleanor was conscious of a sense of satisfaction as 
she went to the dining-room to serve the noon meal. 
It was when the trays were being put upon the shelf 
that Dr. Wayne came to the door, the same strange 
look in his face. “ Katryn and Dorothy are to have a 
Twelfth Night party. They charged me to bid you 
come. But Dr. Mills has promised to put a special on 
this case. He has given it to you. I am afraid it 
will not be a long one and yet I feel that there is a 
chance.” 


5 


66 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


“I’d like to take it,” and the color rushed into 
Eleanor’s cheeks. “Tell them I will come another 
time. I must stay. I am more glad than you can 
possibly know. Poor baby! I do hope her mother 
will come.” 

“Whenever she comes she is to see the baby at once, 
and I will be back later to see your little patient, 
Eleanor,” he said, still looking at her, and she smiled 
up at him, trying to read his expression. 

“ Is there anything I can do for your baby opposite ? ” 
she asked. She could not understand his expression 
as he stood there looking at her. “Do all you can for 
all the babies” — then he was gone. 

The upper window glass showed a patch of the 
heavens, deeply, intensely blue. Then it was a fresh, 
clear winter day outside. How far away was this 
inside world! How little affected by the weather or 
the temper of the panting, breathless world just out 
there! Yet heaven brooded over both. 

“ There’s nothing to do but keep up the stimulation. 
For my part, I think it’s just a piece of nonsense to 
have a special nurse for such a case; but you have to 
give way to the medical men when they take a stand. 
You let me know any change at once. The pulse is 
steadily going down.” Dr. Mills loosed his hold on 
the little wrist. Instantly the child drew her hand 
from him and put it behind her. He laughed as he 
walked away. She lay very still. Beneath the half- 
closed eyes and the little drawn mouth dark shadows 
were gathering. From the bed opposite the strange, 
silent Dolores watched with eyes that seemed to have 


SEQUEL TO CHRISTMAS EVE 67 


concentrated all the darkness of a night that had never 
melted into the dawn of a new day of hope. There 
was a strange attraction about the serious gravity of 
the little creature. Eleanor bent over the bed, but 
the child shrank from her : the dark eyes gave back no 
sign. There was no response to any touch or caress, 
and the little life, slipping away, in the bed opposite, 
demanded all her thought and watchfulness. Eleanor 
moved the screen to shield the d)dng child from the 
curious eyes of visitors. From the group one was 
coming toward her. 

‘^Eleanor Schuyler! Is that you? What in the world 
are you doing here?” Turning, Eleanor saw one of 
the acquaintances that had belonged to the old life — 
Gertrude Chester. 

“Doing my work,” she answered, with a light smile. 

Mrs. Chester had come too, regal in black velvet 
and ermine. “We thought you all sailed last week, 
my dear. How come you to be here ? ” 

Eleanor’s eyes looked clearly, bravely into the in- 
quisitive face. 

“They did sail, Mrs. Chester, but I am here trying 
to learn to be useful.” 

“Oh, horrors, Eleanor! You are not living here — ^in 
this awful place?” Gertrude gasped. 

Though Eleanor’s lips trembled she answered quietly, 
“As you see I am not alone here. There are a good 
many others sharing the kind of life I live. Why 
should it be any worse for me than for them?” 

Mrs. Chester threw back one long end of her ermine 
as she answered apologetically, “ Gertrude never stops 


68 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


to think. Her frankness is sometimes embarrassing. 
You mustn’t be offended at what she says. I know 
just how it is here — quite ideal. I have been on the 
Board of Managers for nine years. I’m the chairman 
of the board at present, my dear — the chairman. 
After all that’s happened I can quite well understand 
that you must want to get away from things. Only, last 
summer we heard of you at so many gay places, that 
everyone hoped you had forgotten that beast, Gerald. 
Tar and feathers would be too good for him, my dear, 
entirely too good. Some people say you have no 
heart; you know people will say anything. But I 
never should have dreamed of finding you here. Any- 
thing I can do to make your work easier you must be 
sure to let me know. The children of the poor are 
very interesting. I once had one in a cellar I used to 
go to visit, but at last the Charity Organization inter- 
fered. My love to your mother when you write. 
Tell her we are to be at Naples next month. Do you 
know, will she be there?” 

All the color had left Eleanor’s face. The child 
Dolores was solemnly gazing at her. She answered 
simply, “I do not know, Mrs. Chester; I have not 
mother’s itinerary.” 

“Did you ever see such a dreadfully sick-looking 
child?” Gertrude exclaimed. “It makes me shiver to 
look at her.” 

Eleanor answered, “ She is dying.” 

Gertrude turned hastily away. “I have a perfect 
horror of death,” she said, “but, I suppose, to such 
children it must be a mercy.” She crossed the ward 


SEQUEL TO CHRISTMAS EVE 69 

to where her friends stood by the opposite bed just as 
the door opened and a girlish figure came in quickly. 
Instinctively, Eleanor knew it was the baby’s mother. 
Miss Ford, who had brought her, turned to speak to 
the visitors. 

Eleanor had just time to whisper, She isn’t suffer- 
ing now, but she is very ill and you will find a terrible 
change.” 

But the young mother seemed not to hear. She 
hurried on until she bent over the little white form. 
She kissed the child in a passion of tenderness. The 
great, blue eyes opened. The child searched the face 
with one long questioning look, then, with a cry, she 
put up both arms, nestling close to her mother’s breast. 
She caught her breath again and again as though she 
would take a deeper draught of life that offered such 
sweetness. 

Eleanor closed the screen about them and turned 
toward the bed opposite. Gertrude called to her, 

Did you ever see such eyes ? They would fit a tragedy 
queen in a dime museum. And she is as disdainful 
as if she were a Czarina. Isn’t she perfectly killing ? ” 

A Western cousin, visiting Gertrude, protested, 
“She isn’t so bad, Gertrude. If she was just dressed 
up, had some petting and spoiling, and taken about 
a little, she’d be awfully stunning.” She tickled the 
baby’s cheeks, pulled her nose and tried to hold her 
hand. The child swept a look of indignant distress 
upon the group, then put her hand out to Eleanor 
much as she had done to Dr. Wayne, not asking to be 
taken, but a claim upon friendship; a claim for pro- 


70 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


tection. Eleanor took it with a strange thrill. Her 
soft brown eyes said to the child’s serious, dark ones, 
“Suffering has made us akin; we understand each 
other, little sister.” 

At last they were gone. The ward was still, save 
for the baby sounds that, like twitter of birds, always 
soften and mellow when the day is dying. The sky 
above showed a patch of soft neutral gray, flecked with 
tiny pink fleecy clouds. As Eleanor watched them 
they did not move across the sky, but seemed to be 
absorbed into the deepness of the depths beyond, 
just to melt away and vanish. “Is that, I wonder,” 
she said to herself, “like the little lives that just fade 
away as we look at them, into the deepness beyond? 
How little we know of life! Its coming, its going, its 
capacity or purpose, or in fact anything about the real 
deep inner thing that is life.” The last cloud was gone 
and the sky turned to her a face growing dark with 
shadows; and even as she watched a little star looked 
down at her. 

Hearing a step she knew to be that of Dr. Wayne, 
she turned quickly. He was shaking little Dolores’s 
hand, but he came at once to the bed behind the screen. 
The mother looked up at him with eyes like the child’s, 
wide and blue and full of soul. The baby was asleep 
in her arms. 

“O Doctor, is there no hope?” she whispered, lest 
she should awaken the child. “She is all I have in 
the world.” 

“ While there is life there is hope,” he said, flashing 
upon her a radiant, sympathetic smile. “It looks as 


SEQUEL TO CHRISTMAS EVE 


71 


if you had already done what we could not do. Your 
coming has given her the desire to live and that counts 
for so much in the fight we must make. You will 
stay to-night?” 

In her fear and anxiety she felt his sympathy and his 
power. “Oh, if I may, Doctor, I will not leave her 
again. I had to give her up to support her. She has 
been so strong and well that I never thought of the 
possibility of this. A position offered out of town. 
I came in this morning to see her just as the messenger 
brought the news.” 

“ We will do our best,” he said, “ and you will stay. 
Take off your hat. Miss Gray will make you com- 
fortable.” 

Then he turned to Eleanor. “ Now the baby’s 
mother is here I may tell Dorothy and Katryn you 
will come? The festivities will be over, but your 
welcome will be there and you must have a change.” 

She followed him to the hall. “I will,” she said, 
standing at the door as he went away. From behind 
in the corner, where little Dolores’ bed stood, there 
came a half moan, a half sob, a half cry of a child. 

“The young lambs are bleating in the meadows; 

The young birds are chirping in the nest; 

The young fawns are playing with the shadows; 

The young flowers are blowing toward the west — 

But the young, young children, O my brothers. 

They are weeping bitterly! — 

They are weeping in the playtime of the others. 

In the country of the free.” 


Elizabeth Browning. 


CHAPTER IX 


TINKER BELL AND THE PROBLEM 

A FLOOD of warm, soft fire-light fell about Eleanor 
as the library door opened. It scattered the shadows 
that a moment before had darkened her life and into the 
light came a soft, gentle voice and Mrs. Barnard’s 
bright smile. 

“You have really come, dear, after a week of hard 
work. We have heard of all you have been doing — 
the blessed comfort, the tender care you have given to 
those poor, suffering little ones. A sweet, holy work 
that must bring its own blessing while it taxes heart 
and brain to their uttermost.” 

Then before the fire, in a great easy-chair, just large 
enough to hold three, Eleanor forgot the past as she 
sat with her two little friends, listening to the wondrous 
joys of the party, which lost nothing by the eloquence 
of four- and six-year-old point of view. 

“Everyone was just as happy as they could be,” 
Dorothy said. “Everything was just right ’cept 
Katryn and I were missing you and Uncle Hubert. 
But, once upon a time mother told us, every one must 
learn to keep their sorry things from hurting other 
people, so we didn’t let one of the children know that 
we had a sorry thing. Did we, Katryn?” 


TINKER BELL 


73 


Katryn answered promptly, ‘‘ No, we never let them 
know. Mother says sometimes you forget the sorry 
things a little bit yourself if you keep trying to think 
about other people and doing nice things. I asked 
Uncle Hubert if he believed that was true. He said it 
depended upon the kind of a heart you had and the 
kind of a sorry thing you had in it. Ours must have 
been the forgetting kind. We didn’t really know how 
much sorry we were till it went away and we felt the 
glad come. When Uncle Hubert came in, just as the 
.children were leaving, and said you would be here 
after a little bit, then we were so glad.” 

Dorothy asked wistfully, “ Do you really think 
every sorry thing brings a glad after a while? Ours 
did. Mother said we could sit up half an hour with you 
to-night and have you all to ourselves just like this. 
Isn’t it lovely?” 

Eleanor drew the child very close to her as she 
answered, “The glads come more quickly to little 
girls; but I suppose when we grow up they still go on 
coming. Yes, I’m sure they do. If we only wait, they 
will come to us all.” She wondered if what she had 
said, she really believed. 

“Hush! hush! hush!” Dorothy raised a little pink 
fore-finger. “Tinker-bell is talking. We were listen- 
ing to her when you came in.” 

Above the sound of the soft crackle of the fire there 
came the tinkle as of little bells. As it grew louder 
the children clapped their hands with joy. 

Katryn tiptoed to the conservatory door and asked, 
“Do you want to know whether she believes in fairies, 


74 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


Tinker? She really does even if she is grown up, so 
you may tell all the secrets you want.” 

Standing there in the conservatory door, under the 
great palms, the fire-light playing about her dainty 
white frock and her shining yellow hair, she turned 
her sparkling eyes to Eleanor and explained, ‘‘The 
other fairies will only let Tinker show herself when the 
sun shines: but she talks to us whenever the conserva- 
tory door is open.” 

“Tell me all about Tinker.* How did you persuade 
a fairy to come to live with you? Here, before the 
fire, is just the place for a true fairy story and it’s a 
good many years since I have heard one. Come, 
Katryn, your place is all ready and I can’t wait,” 
Eleanor said. 

Dorothy squeezed her. “Oh, you are such a dear. 
You’re nice, just like uncle. I’m the youngest: let 
me tell the first part. One day mother was at Van- 
tine’s and she found Tinker there. They called her 
a Japanese wind-bell made of painted glass.” 

Katryn interrupted: “But she was really made of a 
kind of magic for a Japanese lover to send to his 
sweetheart, so that when he was far away he could send 
his love on the wind and it would touch the glasses, 
and make them move, so when she heard the tinkle she 
would know it was the voice of his love speaking to her 
heart: so you see, even they knew it had a fairy about 
it.” 

“It’s my turn now, Katryn.” Dorothy’s little eager 
face pressed close as she took up the story. “We just 
heard the voice and we knew it was a fairy, but we 


TINKER BELL 


75 


couldn’t tell its name till one day in the summer we 
woke up early. The sun was shining right through 
the window and through the glass too. There on the 
floor, by my crib, was a big shiny light. Then we 
whispered to each other, ‘It’s Peter Pan’s Tinker.’ 
Every day, when the sun shines, we play with her; and 
she talks to us always.” 

“Now, Dorothy, it’s my turn,” and Katryn began. 
“One day Uncle Hubert found in a down- town shop 
one with white flowers painted on the glass. He 
thought we could each have a fairy, so he brought it 
home; but Tinker would not shine while the other 
fairy was here. We waited three days, then we put 
Uncle Hubert’s fairy away, and the next morning there 
was Tinker jumping about in the corner. I s’pose 
one fairy is enough for a house. Tinker hangs over 
our cribs at night and on the rubber-tree in the day- 
time. Listen! She’s trying to tell us something now. 
Oh, mother’s coming. It’s her time to have you and 
it’s our bed- time. We’ll have to go. I wish nice half 
hours wouldn’t go so fast.” 

When the good-nights had ceased floating down the 
stairway and were lost in the childish prattle, that, in 
its turn, was lost in the upper distance, the library 
heard only the music of the fire. 

Mrs. Barnard drew a low chair toward the hearth; 
laying her hand tenderly on Eleanor’s clasped ones, 
she said, “What is it, dear? Anything I can help? 
Sympathy and love have their limitations in the shadow 
of a great sorrow that must always have its pain. But 
I was afraid, dear, there was something new to-night.” 


76 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


Eleanor caught the kind hand and held it prisoner 
as she said, “I can’t understand life. I used to think 
it all beauty and joy. Now it’s all hideous darkness: 
and misery. Not for myself : I am inured to it. That’s | 
all the years can bring to me; all I expect. Though I 
can’t understand it, I accept it. Nothing can ever 
make it any better. There is nothing to hope for, 
nothing to wait for. Nothing matters for me. But for 
those helpless children, who have done nothing but open 
their eyes upon a world they are ready to meet with 
love, and find only its buffet, its cold, cruel hardness 
to frighten and terrify them, rouses in me a wild rage. 
Why do good people give their thousands to build 
palaces just to keep helpless creatures alive in misery? 
Why don’t they either do more or do nothing ? Good 
women, in their rich clothes, pass up and down the 
rows of pretty white beds where little hearts are break- 
ing, or life is dumbly starving to death. Because the 
palms grow green in the windows and the canaries 
sing in the gold cages they smile at the wonder of child 
life so protected, and drive away in their great carriages, 
behind their fine horses to their luxurious homes, 
where their own happy babies live in the sunshine of 
life; and while they listen to their laughter, they write 
repoits of the little brothers and sisters who live in the 
shadow, as if it was a great matter to feed the body and 
starve its life.” 

Mrs. Barnard looked into the beautiful, eager face 
as she said, “There are other people in the world as 
well as the little institution children: like the poor old 
woman, who, in spite of having victuals and drink for 


TINKER BELL 


77 


the chief of her diet, would not be contented or quiet. 
Life only gives a small per cent of satisfaction to even 
the most fortunate of us. It is the immortal in us 
crying out through the bars of our mortal, to the 
Infinite, the Eternal. The promise that ‘when we 
wake up, we shall be satisfied’ is to me always the 
most wonderful of all the promises for the hereafter.” 

“But it is the needless suffering. What recompense 
can the future offer for the stunted powers, the possi- 
bilities snuffed out like a candle, because the people 
who have the sacred trust of a child are rough and 
crude themselves ? When you see a child enduring pain 
and confinement for months, growing each day more 
refined, more spiritualized, you are silent before a great 
mystery. But this is different. Fancy Dorothy and 
Katryn in an institution. The change would be much 
the same as with a plant taken from a country garden to 
a tenement-house window. All the beauty of life 
would die; only a pitiful, miserable semblance of 
themselves would be left to call life.” 

“But, my dear, remember, nothing can take the 
place of mother love to any child,” Mrs. Barnard said 
tenderly. “And even to us, who are grown-up chil- 
dren, when the love that makes life is taken away, 
nothing can change the existence that must stretch out 
through the years, a dull, hopeless monotony till at 
last we come to the joy of satisfaction. Surely you 
know this painfully well, poor dear. There are hard 
things we cannot understand any more than we can 
help them. People can build houses, they can buy 
food, but how can they buy tenderness or love ?” 


78 


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Eleanor’s face glowed with a strange light as she 
turned to her friend. “No. Love cannot be bought 
by the pound or yard. Any mawkish sentiment would 
be a hideous counterfeit. But I am not unreasonable, 
dear Mrs. Barnard. Indeed, I am not. Who would 
engage a gardener without first assuring themselves that 
he had a comprehensive knowledge of plants; and 
patience to wait for, and help, not hinder their growing ? 
And who would take even the coarsest material to a 
dressmaker they knew had never made a garment? 
Suppose, when Gertrude Chester went to her fine, 
French modiste she should find the material had been 
cut by an apprentice girl, who, in her ignorance, had 
made a botch of the silk and lace. Can’t you fancy 
Mrs. Chester looking at the heap of soiled, mutilated 
stuff that should have made a gown and had become 
only a ruin? The modiste might urge she regretted 
the incompetency of her women in the work-room. 
Mrs. Chester would rightly hold her accountable for 
the ignorance or knowledge of the people to whom she 
trusted her materials. Yet she, as President of the 
Board, smiles up and down the lines of little children 
that ought to be the hope of the future, and sees good 
material spoiled, destroyed by ignorance every day.” 

Mrs. Barnard looked with sympathetic kindness into 
the eager face as she said, “Ignorance has to be the 
excuse for many mistakes, dear, in every walk of life. 
Just where justice and mercy meet it would be hard 
for any of us to say. It seems to me it was at the 
Refuge I last heard of Jane Kennedy. Do you know, 
is she there now ? ” 


TINKER BELL 


79 


The memory of Christmas night made Eleanor turn 
in surprise. “O Mrs. Barnard,” she said, ‘‘surely 
you don’t know her? She is in charge of the reception 
ward — one of the most important positions. Dr. 
Wayne didn’t put her there, did he ? ” 

Mrs. Barnard shook her head. “No, indeed, dear; 
I doubt if he remembers her. She came to us as cook 
when we went to the shore last summer; but she 
proved to be so incompetent, a change was necessary. 
But it is hard to send a girl back to town in the summer. 
She had almost no chance of finding good work, so 
Nora, went to pay a visit to a poor, old, sick mother 
and Jane became housemaid in her place. But there 
was continual friction. She was quarrelsome and had 
a violent temper. The servants were always making 
complaints: but matters reached the climax early in 
July. She had had a quarrel with Bridget — quite lost 
her temper, when William annoyed her in some way. 
She was going up the stairs with a jug of water. In her 
anger she threw it at him, as he stood below. He is 
old and rather imsteady. The sudden blow and the 
shock of the cold water stunned him for a time. The 
servants became alarmed and indignant. There was 
nothing to do but get her to the train as soon as possible. 
The next I heard of her she was working at the Infants’ 
Refuge.” 

“Yes,” Eleanor cried, “half the women in the 
regular wards have made a failure, either as shop girls 
or housemaids; but have, without difficulty, found 
positions there, to take charge of little children. So 
long as they can control them, have what is called good 


8o 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


discipline, and keep the wards in order, they are con- 
sidered competent.” 

Mrs. Barnard’s face was full of interest as she said, 
“I agree with you, dear, and I see your point; but 
what have you to suggest as a remedy? It is so much 
more easy to see wrongs than to find a way to right 
them.” 

A log fell and broke apart in the fireplace. The 
blaze, leaping up, cast a radiant glow upon Eleanor’s 
enthusiastic face. 

“Life doesn’t ask extraordinary things of us, dear 
Mrs. Barnard. Common sense can make so many 
things right. It is the lack of sense, the lack of thought, 
that makes lots of things wrong. If the world could 
only be made to think, it would not be at all hard In' 
make it act. In spite of all the trouble and sorrow 
about us, the world has a kind heart and surely it is a 
generous one. Think how readily people give of their 
money. If they would only give of themselves half as 
much, what would life be ? The millennium would 
dawn and there would be no more ‘Jink’s babies.’ 
Mrs. Chester and her friends think they are giving 
themselves when they hang toys on the Christmas 
tree, or go to the board meetings; but that same board 
might as well be a wall, entirely separating them from 
the lives of the little helpless creatures whose welfare 
they meet to discuss and consider. They know no 
more of the emptiness of little Barney’s heart, or the 
dreariness of his life, than if they had never seen him. 
Yet he opened his eyes in that baby home the same 
day that his mother died. Miss Ford told me his 


TINKER BELL 


8i 


story. He is just a little waif; no one in the world to 
care, no place but the Refuge. If he should break his 
leg it would have the very best care; but he may break 
his heart, or all the true child life in him, that part 
which belongs to his immortal soul, may waste away in 
a decline before the very eyes of the women who have 
undertaken the awful responsibility of directing and 
controlling the things which go to the making or the 
marring of the true child life of the little creatures, 
who, in their helplessness are in their power; who 
begin life pitifully handicapped in most cases and 
ought to have the greatest wisdom to help them make 
what the country asks to find in them, what God 
means them to be.’’ 

Mrs. Barnard asked, as she watched the eager face, 
“But how, dear, is this possible? You have not yet 
offered any solution to the problem.” 

“Oh, there are a hundred ways. Common sense 
would show any one that wanted to know. Mrs. 
Chester would think it criminal to be as ignorant 
about the likes and dislikes, the desires and wishes 
of Jumbo — Gertrude’s pug — as she is about the chil- 
dren who have no other women to look to for maternal 
I care than the board of mothers. She would never 
I think of leaving Jumbo alone with Jane Kennedy, 
j yet she smilingly invests a dozen such women with 
I the right, the authority to direct, discipline, and con- 
I trol the happiness or suffering, the things that make 
j life to those little children, who, many of them, having 
! no mothers, being poor, helpless and dependent, must 
jtake what comes. The consequences in the future 
5 


82 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


will cry out against the mistakes that it will be too 
late then to remedy. When these results show spoiled 
lives there will be many to blame, but no one to pity, 
and the loss will be to the country, to the world, but, 
most pitiful of all, to the creature itself, who never had 
a chance to find its best, its truest, highest self.” 
There were tears in the brown eyes. 

Mrs. Barnard laid her hand gently on Eleanor’s 
shoulder. “Remember, dear, if the children all had 
your nature it would be a tragedy; but you know well 
the class they are drawn from and think what the 
tenement-house child would have at home.” 

Eleanor rose and stood looking down at the fire. 
“Yes,” she said, “I know. A crowded, dirty, mussed- 
up little comer, where there were many blows and 
rough words; yet there was a surety of love — individual 
and personal — that belonged entirely to the child. 
The place each one filled could not be filled by another 
child, no matter how much more clean and attractive 
it might be. That special Abraham, or Barney or 
Johnny alone belonged to that place and the child 
feels it and knows it as a plant feels the air and the 
sunshine and grows. Often the growth is the wrong 
way, toward sin and cunning, but it is growth and not 
stagnation as one so often finds in the institution, where 
there is cleanliness, shelter, warmth, clothes, good 
food to contrast with the dirt, packed rooms and 
dreary desolation that they call home. But what is 
there, dear friend, to contrast with the love which 
beneath all the roughness is there — something for the 
child to hold, to grasp? There ought to be an intelli- 


TINKER BELL 


83 


gence, which, though it could not give personal affec- 
tion could give to each child a tender kindness, exact 
a certain standard of life and mete out sure justice. In 
the family a child does wrong, is naughty; sometimes 
it is sorry, receives punishment, and is forgiven. 
Higher, better things are expected next time. With 
such nurses as Jane Kennedy the poor hapless little 
creatures are so many bothers, nuisances, probable 
criminals. It is a foregone conclusion that there is no 
conscience. They themselves have no feeling that 
their justice or veracity in dealing with the child are 
to be high and strong and from the child they expect 
nothing. Truth, honor, loyalty, of course, are not 
always there; yet how often in us all do we grow 
toward the thing that is expected of us, be it bad or 
good. With the little slum child the conditions are 
pathetic; but when a child of fine material comes into 
their grasp, takes a place in the long rows it becomes 
awful — it is cruel.’’ 

Eleanor did not see Hubert Wayne pass under the 
portiere as she went on, “It has always seemed to me 
no joy in the world could be like that of motherhood. 
Even if one could only rejoice in it for a few days or a 
few weeks it would belong to one for eternity. But 
when I looked at that mother to-night I knew that 
could one choose, one would forego that joy sooner 
than endure the agony of being the mother of a baby 
in that row. She must carry through life, that poor 
mother, the memory of the look in her dying baby’s 
eyes. No matter how plain or simple a woman might 
be to take such a position she ought to have a heart 


84 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


capable of some motherhood, the power of being 
touched by the pitifulness of the child’s need. The 
women ought to be chosen because of their know- 
ledge of what the work demands of them and the 
measure of their desire to fill it.” 

A flood of light fell across the library floor. Two 
little figures in white night-gowns and soft woolly 
wrappers. “Mother, you don’t mind our coming,” 
and then, as they threw their arms about Eleanor’s 
neck they slipped a little box in her hand. “We’ve 
brought Uncle Hubert’s fairy to you. You’ll know 
what it says when you have it, and you’ll let the chil- 
dren play with it, won’t you ? ” Katryn asked. 

And Dorothy added, “I’m sure there aren’t any 
fairies where you live and the children must have been 
wanting awfully bad to have a fairy. You will love 
the fairy too, won’t you?” 

“Heaven’s messages, freighted with various speech, 

Are uttered in our presence every day; 

But only souls, with opened ears attuned 
To life and death, can hear the words they say.” 


CHAPTER X 


MRS. BARNARD TRIES THE SOLUTION 

There’s a picture ought to delight your dear, 
poetic, sentimental heart. Miss Gray,” whispered 
Miss Ford as she drew back the screen. There, in 
the faint light of the early morning, Eleanor saw the 
tired mother, weary with the long night watch, sitting 
in the chair, asleep. On the bed with wide blue eyes 
fixed upon her mother’s face lay tiny Helen, white and 
frail, the shadows still about her mouth and eyes, but 
contentment and satisfaction giving a strange peace 
and rest to the wan face. 

“I think that picture would rejoice any heart, even 
the philosophical heart of a nurse; and it stands for a 
proof that all I have said is true,” Eleanor replied. 

Miss Ford was slipping a pillow under the sleeping 
mother’s head. She only smiled her assent as they 
came away from the corner. Then she remarked, 
“There is something of truth in every fallacy. I’d like 
to know what your theory is about this little creature 
here. I do not think she has wakened up to any sense 
of feeling yet; but, you see, I have never had much 
time to spend on the ethics of infancy. I’d like to hear 
what you think.” 

Eleanor smiled down at the little serious face with 
its solemn eyes, but they gave back no response. 
85 


86 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


“This,” she said, “is surely a child of a tragedy. Some 
great sorrow has swallowed up all the sunshine that 
was her bit of brightness and warmth in the world. I 
wish I did really know more about children. I never 
thought about them until lately. I took it for granted 
naturally that the world would be kind and considerate 
of anything that was young and helpless. Since I 
came here I have been waking up to everything in 
life. I wish I really knew about children in general 
and this little one in particular. What do you know of 
her?” 

Miss Ford made a record on the chart as she said, 
“I fancy there is not much to know. She’s just one 
of the unwelcome little strangers that nobody ever 
wanted; who came without any right into this world. 
She’s a pay patient, but as far as I know, there has been 
no one to see her or inquire for her. Twice she has 
been a pretty sick child, but there seemed to be no one 
to care whether she pulled through or not; and she 
herself was absolutely indifferent. When she is well 
enough to be on the floor she never hobnobs with the 
other children, but creeps off by herself.” 

Eleanor was making a little bed. She stopped a 
moment with the sheet in her hand and turned her 
brown eyes full upon Miss Ford. “Think of it,” 
she said. “How awful to have never been really 
loved. Her inheritance is probably from some cold- 
hearted, selfish parents. A refined, sensitive nature; 
a capacity for feeling and suffering. They pay a 
paltry sum for her food and shelter and think they have 
done their duty nobly. And her child-life goes on in 


MRS. BARNARD TRIES THE SOLUTION 87 

the shadow. I’d like to know where is the justice of 
life.” 

“ It’s right here this very minute, compelling you to 
take off the sheet you have put on upside down. There 
certainly isn’t much in the child to attract one, and yet 
she has been pretty fortunate. If she had father and 
mother she could not have had more skilled care than 
Dr. Wayne has given her ever since she first came. I 
suspect he knows something about her. He always 
insists that she shall have an end bed. I suppose he 
thinks it a little more private and exclusive, and he 
never comes into the ward without giving her a word. 
Perhaps he finds her attractive: perhaps it is only her 
great need appeals to him. He is just that sort of 
man. To-day she is to sit up in the big chair for a 
little. Will you please get her ready?” Miss Ford 
said as she went down the ward. 

“Come, little Dolores Payne; in spite of your name, 
you must be gay,” Eleanor said, as she took the child 
in her arms. “Can’t you smile and forget that you 
are Dolores Payne?” The child looked into Eleanor’s 
face with her great dark eyes; then, as if she read 
something there that pleased her, that she understood, 
she seriously laid her little head down upon Eleanor’s 
shoulder with a sigh of contentment. There was a 
strange fascination about the child’s reserve and a 
real pleasure in making her ready to sit up, to have a 
treat, to do something to vary the monotony of her 
dreary existence. 

“Don’t you think she really is better?” The girl- 
mother was looking into Dr. Wayne’s face with eyes 


88 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


that tried to read his very heart. Eleanor knew that 
hope was coming. She saw it in his eyes and she 
watched the mother’s face as he answered, “She has 
certainly held her own through the night and that is 
all we could ask. Conditions are going to make a 
great difference. You will have to put everything 
aside and make her the first consideration. Of course i 
we cannot yet say anything definite, but I think we 
may hope.” t 

The mother’s blue eyes were full of tears as she said, 
“I haven’t anything in the world. There isn’t much \ 
I can do. I am glad to work for her, but I couldn’t 
leave her like this.” 

“Well, we must wait and see,” he said. “Only 
keep up your courage.” He went out after having a 
word with Dolores, leaving behind him hope in the 
mother’s heart. i 

It was in the early afternoon that Dr. Mills ushered 
Mrs. Barnard into the ward. With her coming there j 
was an atmosphere of peace and rest and courtesy. 

“Yes, this is the Infirmary Ward. The children 
here are all more or less ill. The child you are asking • 
about is practically dying.” 

The young mother heard what he said and her eyes 
held a look of terror as she crouched closer to the 
bed where the baby lay asleep. ■ 

Mrs. Barnard was holding Eleanor’s hand when i 
she said, “Thank you. Doctor, very much. Perhaps 
you will let me have a chat with the mother. Dr. 
Wayne was telling me about her baby at luncheon and 
I had a feeling I would like to be in touch with her. 


MRS. BARNARD TRIES THE SOLUTION 89 

Perhaps I could be of some service, it seems so very 
sad.” 

He drew the screen back as he said, half laughingly, 
‘‘Well, you see, it’s the kind of thing we have here 
all the time. The mortality among the very young 
children of the poor is high and the waifs that drift 
here are usually a good way along the down road.” 

Mrs. Barnard smiled. “Thank you. Doctor; do 
not let me take any more of your time. I know it is 
valuable. Miss Gray will show me to the office very 
shortly. I would like to see you, if I may, before I 
leave.” 

Though Dr. Mills had not intended to go, he found 
himself dismissed. 

Mrs. Barnard had turned to the mother and was 
saying with her sweet smile, “So your little girl has 
made a beginning in the right direction. I only hope 
she may continue to improve. I can see she is a pretty 
sick baby yet. Is there not something I can do?” 

“How kind you are.” The young mother’s voice 
was half a sob. “I do thank you with all my heart. 
There isn’t anything any one can do. I am just watch- 
ing and praying every minute; all that life holds for 
me is there on that little bed.” 

Eleanor left them together. After a few minutes 
Miss Ford came to her. “Dr. Wayne’s sister is a 
friend of yours. Miss Gray,” she said. “Don’t you 
want to stay with her? I can spare you while she is 
here.” And so Eleanor found herself back in the 
corner behind the screen. 

Mrs. Barnard smiled a welcome. “You see I have 


90 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


not forgotten our talk last night, dear. I have come 
and you must help me.” Then she turned to the 
young mother, who went on with her story. 

“I was only a child when my mother died. I grew 
up at school. When I was eighteen, I went to my 
father, but I hardly knew him. He was boarding at a 
quiet place. There was nothing to do; life was very 
dull and I was lonely. A young man boarded in the 
same house. He was the only bright thing that came 
into the dull days. Now I know that he was always 
selfish, but then I only felt that he was young and 
handsome. When he asked me to marry him and my 
father said, ‘No, we were nothing but children,’ I was 
full of anger and indignation. One day my father 
would not let me do something I wanted to. Then 
Frank suggested I should go with him and be married 
that night. I went, with little urging. When my 
father found we were married he would have nothing 
to do with me. My husband took me home to his 
mother. From the very first he was selfish; but I 
did not seem to mind or notice. We had been married 
a year when baby came. There had never been any 
real trouble between us till then. He was jealous of 
every moment I gave to her. There is no use going 
through it all: it was just awful. He wanted me to 
let her be adopted. When she was a year old the 
climax came. She was sick one night and he wanted 
me to go to the theatre. Oh, I was so angry! I knew 
that what I had married was not a man but a selfish 
monster. My whole soul cried out in rage. I said I 
would go away; support my baby and myself. In 


MRS. BARNARD TRIES THE SOLUTION 91 


the morning I did. He knew we were going. He 
said I could make the choice between the child and my 
husband. I came away and I tried to support her and 
take care of her at the same time. I can’t tell you how 
I struggled for six months. Then I had the offer of a 
position. A friend advised me to bring her here. 
The agony of that Christmas night when we were first 
parted I will never forget; but I really thought it was 
for her good and that the pain would all be mine; 
every one would be kind to her and love her; she would 
forget me in time, because here people would give her 
the care I have not been able to these last months; 
and here they would understand babies. I cannot stay 
here with her; I cannot go away and leave her like 
this; I have no place in the world I can take her.” 
She did not cry; but spoke like one stunned with 
suffering. 

Just behind the screen Eleanor could see the little 
Dolores. Her head had fallen forward from sheer 
exhaustion. In her passive endurance she had made 
no outcry. Very tenderly she took her from the chair, 
held her close for a moment before she laid her back 
in the little bed. From the white face on the white 
pillow the dark eyes fixed themselves upon Eleanor’s 
face. ‘‘Would you read my heart, little sister?” she 
asked, as she tucked the child tenderly in. 

When she went back to the corner behind the screen 
the young mother was sobbing as if her heart would 
break and Mrs. Barnard was coming away. She was 
saying, “ I will go to the office and make arrangements 
at once; the carriage is waiting.” 


92 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


Then the mother turned her tearful face. ‘‘ Oh, you 
don’t mean now?” she cried. “I can’t believe it. 
When you came I was thinking the world was all hard 
and selfish. I don’t deserve it and I can’t find words 
to say what I feel.” 

‘^Only make ready as fast as you can,” Mrs. Bar- 
nard said with a tender smile, as she closed the screen 
and walked to the door with Eleanor. 

“What are you going to do?” Eleanor asked. 

Mrs. Barnard smiled at her. “ Just what you taught 
me to do last night. I am going to see if I can help 
this mother save her baby; take them to our old night 
nursery and try, if bringing one of the little shadow 
children into the sunshine of her more fortunate 
sisters won’t bring a blessing to them all.” 

Eleanor threw her arms about Mrs. Barnard. “ Oh, 
you know that was never one bit of it meant for you 
who are always making sunshine for every one. Think 
what you have done for me and my poor shadowed 
life. But this is too splendid for anything. Perhaps 
God lets compensations come to us in this world; 
unexpected surprises — tenderness to meet the hardness 
and love to outweigh the cruelty.” 

When, half an hour later, Eleanor took the little 
Helen, wrapped in blankets, to carry her down to the 
waiting carriage. Miss Ford said, as she put in the last 
pin, “I don’t wonder you and Mrs. Barnard are 
friends. You are both equally quixotic. I wonder 
if she is as sentimental as you are ? If there were more 
of the same kind of queer people in the world it would 
certainly be an easier place to live in, only then you 


MRS. BARNARD TRIES THE SOLUTION 93 


would not be so extraordinary and you wouldn’t seem 
so nice and refreshing as you are now. It takes all 
kinds of people to make a world, but the little, sad 
ones must find it a great advantage to have a few 
such queer people; I rather fancy Dr. Wayne has 
a scheme for Dolores, from something he said this 
morning.” 

“ As Eleanor carried the little bundle out of the ward 
she said, with a happy laugh, “ Oh, wouldn’t it be de- 
lightful if some one had a scheme or a plan for every- 
one of the poor little things here!” Her eyes were 
fairly radiant as she handed the baby into the carriage 
to the anxious mother. 

Dr. Mills was tucking the robe in about Mrs. Bar- 
nard. ^‘You may say to the nurse,” he said, “that we 
have kept up pretty high stimulation for forty-eight 
hours; but the heart record makes a better showing 
to-day than yesterday. The nostalgia, which was 
certainly acute, will be relieved entirely by the present 
arrangement. Then she will be right under Dr. 
Wayne’s eye. You ought to have the best results.” 

“Thank you. Dr. Mills. You have been most 
considerate,” she said, as she held her hand out. “My 
brother felt this a case where a radical move could 
bring about no worse results than were apparently 
imminent, and might prove beneficial and stay the 
course of the disease, possibly. Good-bye. I will 
let you hear of the little patient. I am glad you too 
feel we are running no risk in moving the child.” 

Then she looked into Eleanor’s eyes that were 
radiant with triumphant joy. “ There is nothing in this 


94 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


world, dear, like testing a theory to prove whether it 
be based on a fallacy or a truth. We will see.” 

Then the carriage rolled away. Eleanor and Dr. 
Mills went up the steps. He gave a queer, short, dis- 
agreeable laugh. “Well, this beats the band! Can 
you tell me what under the sun Mrs. Barnard is up to? 
Has she gone stark mad or is she going to start a private 
Refuge of her own? Why under heaven is she taking 
that kid and her mother into her elegant house? I’ll 
be blessed, if I can see any sense in the whole thing.” 
He didn’t at all understand why Eleanor’s eyes shone, 
her cheeks glowed and her whole face was beautiful 
with feeling and power. 

“Is it a little thing to save the life of a child, Dr. 
Mills? Why should not one use what they have to 
bring blessing to others? No one knows what that 
child’s life may be worth to the world in years to come, 
or what it is worth to the mother even now.” 

He stopped, his hand on the office door. “No 
reason to suppose she will be worth more to the world 
than one half the kids that go out of it every day. 
There’s got to be a place to keep such cases and there’s 
no city more generous to its poor than New York. 
But to take them into one’s own house and treat them 
as if they were somebody, that’s where I draw the line. 
Mrs. Barnard does not know anything about those 
people.” 

Eleanor looked steadily at him. “ She is only doing 
to this mother just what she would like to have her do 
had they changed places; because she has happy 
children who have the fullness of all that life can bring 


MRS. BARNARD TRIES THE SOLUTION 95 


them, she wants to do something for another mother 
to help her keep the little child that is all she has in the 
world. If one is to do this work one must make a 
beginning somewhere.” 

“A beginning!” he cried. “Is she going to come here 
every few days and cart ofiF a dying kid? I would 
have given a good deal to ask her what she was up to, 
but she is one of those truly swell women who treat 
you as if you were a lord or a duke and you are bound, 
in return, to treat her like a queen: the sort of breed 
that there is no sham about — gentility to the very 
marrow of the bones. I’d give a good copper, though, 
just to imderstand why she has done this.” 

“There are lots of things, Dr. Mills, we come to 
understand after a time. Mrs. Barnard could not have 
a low motive,” Eleanor said, with a radiant smile. 
“Remember, point of view makes a great difference. 
We look at life so differently. Life itself stands for 
such a different thing to each of us. We live to learn 
and then we learn to live.” 


“ Heaven’s messages, freighted with various speech, 
Are uttered in our presence every day; 

But only souls, with opened ears attuned 
To life and death, can hear the words they say.” 


CHAPTER XI 


MARY RILAN’S LESSON — DOLORES 

“Miss Gray, do look! Did you ever see such a 
sight since you were horned,” Mary Rilan, the new 
ward-maid, cried. 

There, standing in the hall, under the light, was 
certainly a curious spectacle. From her size she might 
have been two years old; from her expression she 
might have been any age. Tousled brown hair hung ^ 
about her head in a knotted mass. The grimy facet 
was extraordinarily small with a wide mouth that* 
opened and closed spasmodically and eyes much like; 
those of a deer, caught at bay. An ill-shaped lilac 
calico dress touched the ground. The waist-band fell 
far below the child’s hips; the neck-band would 
scarcely have choked Jumbo and dwelt in a region far 
remote from the scrap of a pipe-stem throat. The 
sumptuous lilac sleeves had been rolled back; below, 
them reached out into the world large, coarse, un-, 
bleached sleeves of some unclassified garment from 
out of which came little, claw-like hands. ^ 

Mary Rilan was laughing loudly. “Ain’t she a. 
regular circus? The Prevention officer just brought 
her. You’d think they’d keep a woman down to their 
office just to put the clothes on the young uns. Ladies’ 
sewing societies makes ’em. They gets the awfullest 

96 


MARY RILAN’S LESSON 


97 


kinds of stuffs. But I tell you, they puts on elegant 
sewing; you can’t see nothing of their stitches, just 
like they puts on their own folks’ things. I guess they 
think Prevention children ain’t got nothing to do with 
looking pretty. No more they have. • However you’d 
fix this kid up, she’d be a clown anyway.” 

“Don’t, don’t, Mary,” Eleanor said. “She cannot 
help it. Are you going to put her to bed — poor little 
mite?” 

Then from beneath the tangle of hair, from out the 
cavernous mouth came a voice, shrill and high as a 
steam whistle, “ Oh, lady, I want me mother. I’ve 
been a-wanting of her most forever. Since the big cop 
took me off. Oh, I want me mother, I want me mother.” 

I Mary’s amusement found vent in shrieks of laughter. 
“Oh, ain’t she just the killingest. Miss Kennedy 
I won’t mind being kept late when she sees what a 
! circus I’m a-bringing her,” she cried. 

With limping step the child came toward Eleanor, the 
' shrill voice still piping clear : “ Me mother, lady, me 
I mother. It’s me mother I’m a-wanting awful bad.” 

I Eleanor stooped to speak to the child when from 
I the door of the reception ward Jane Kennedy’s voice 
I sounded the word of command. “ Mary Rilan, I’d 
I like to know what you mean by bringing a kid in at 
this hour of the night, just as I’m going off duty. I 
just ain’t going to stop and that’s all there is about it.” 

The child’s grimy little paws held Eleanor’s hand as 
if in a vise. 

Mary Rilan answered pertly, “You ain’t got no call 
I to sass me. Keep it for Dr. Mills. ’Twas him sent 
6 


98 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


the kid up and says he, ‘Tell Miss Kennedy to settle 
her down quick; she looks like a regular tough/ I 
had nothing to do but just fetch her up.” 

Miss Kennedy’s eyes were giving out an unpleasant 
light. “Is it to the hall you generally take patients, 
Mary? Suppose since you are so particular to obey 
orders you just heed them enough to march her right 
along into the ward. Begin with her in the dressing- 
room and I will be there in a minute.” 

Eleanor smiled down into the wild eyes that looked 
imploringly at her through the tangle of hair as the 
child was led reluctantly away. Then she turned to 
the little room at the end of the hall which was con- 
nected with the ward by a door which was kept locked. 
The bandage roller on the table and the basket of cut 
gauze showed the evening’s voluntary work. She 
was soon busy, while her thoughts were in the night 
nursery, where Mrs. Barnard’s little guest was making , 
a struggle for life. Was it true kindness to hope she 
would live ? Suppose she did. What was before her ? 
A certainty of privation, weakness, loneliness and 
desolation and a probability of cruel disappointments 
and utter wreckage by-and-bye. If she should slip 
away now, death would set a seal of absolute peace; 
upon the little face no matter what hard lines life 
might have drawn; the whole expression would say 
that death had brought release. Little Dolores, up- 
stairs, lying alone, unloved, in the little comer bed— - 
why had Dr. Wayne made the fight for her life? Just 
to bring her back from the very borderland of that 
world which sets right the wrongs of this one? What 


MARY RILAN’S LESSON 


99 


had he brought her back to ? A stretch of gray, color- 
less, lonely, monotonous existence which would be 
broken in upon by the hardness and cruelty of life, 
when the time would come, that she must fight and 
strive and struggle for just food and shelter in a world 
that would ever be asking the same question that her 
own heart would be always asking. ‘‘Who am I? 
Where do I belong? What rights have I?” Affection 
^ and love — which alone can make the sunshine of any 
life, bring to it golden days of joy, glorious sunrises of 
hope, and sweet, sad simset hours — were forever ob- 
scured from her life by the dark gray cloud of an im- 
penetrable gloom that she could neither understand nor 
remove. She said, half aloud, “Dr. Wayne is really 
; fond of her. I wonder why? Surely I ought to be 
I just because of what he has done for us both. I ought 
. to love her.” A wave of great tenderness for the little 
i lonely child filled her heart and swept about her till 
I it seemed to flood the whole room. Then through it 
there suddenly came from beyond the closed door the 
j cry of the new patient. “ Me mother, oh, it’s me 
I mother I want, lady.” 

I Then Jane Kennedy’s voice. “Never you mind 
I your mother. Just lie down there and be quiet or I’ll 
I give you something you’ll not be wanting. Shut up 
! now.” 

There was a sudden hush; then, as if the child had 
held her breath only long enough to gather fresh 
strength, louder and voider came the cry, “Mammy, 
mammy! Oh, lady — ” then it broke into a fierce howl 
as Jane Kennedy administered corporal punishment. 


lOO 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


Five minutes hush. Jane Kennedy moved about 
the ward: then again, loud and shrill, “The cop took 
me off me mother, lady; me poor mother, oh, have 
pity. I’ m dying for me mother.’ ' 

“If you make that noise again a black woman will 
come out of that door after you. She’ll just carry 
you off and chuck you into the river.” 

Full of alarm the shrill voice whispered, “Shure it 
won’t be where them dock rats lives, will it? I’m 
awful skeered of them dock rats. Oh, I want me 
mother.” 

“Make no mistake about it: there will be plenty 
of dock rats where the black woman is going to throw 
you, and they will squeak and bite like good fellows. 
Remember, if you make another bit of noise that black 
woman will come right out after you.” 

Then the sound of starched muslin as Jane Kennedy 
pulled off her apron; a whispered conversation with 
Mary Rilan; the nurse was off duty and fast getting 
out of her uniform as she went down the hall. 

It was all still in the ward and again the thought of 
little Dolores came back to Eleanor. A tenderness 
and a longing to do something for the child, to bring a 
touch of sunshine into her shadowed life began to take 
definite form when from the ward again arose that 
shrill cry, “Mammy, mammy. Oh! Oh! Some- 
body, for the love of the holy saints, take me to me 
mother. I’m skeered of them dock rats and I want 
me mother.” Then there came a wild shriek of such 
absolute terror that Eleanor dropped the handle of 
the bandage roller and sprang to her feet. 


MARY RILAN’S LESSON 


lOI 


She was at the ward door in an instant. Over the 
bed that stood by the closed door was a black figure 
with arms reaching wide over the child. In a second 
it had turned, hurried toward Eleanor and drawn her 
into the light of the hall which showed only a black 
rain-coat and Mary Rilan’s giggling face covered with 
a black tissue veil. 

“I never seen a child struck down so suddent,’’ she 
cried, as she fastened the coat at the throat. ‘‘I was 
just ready to go out, so I threw the veil right over my 
face and came kinder slow on her. I tell you it did 
the business quick enough. Miss Kennedy said it 
would. She’s awful clever at that sort of thing. She 
knows children right down to the bottom and she 
knows just how to take ’em. The kid give that awful 
holler and there haint been a sound since. I tell you 
its awful good training for a beginner to be under a 
nurse like Miss Kennedy.” 

Eleanor looked into the girl’s face. She saw nothing 
evil, nothing cruel. She was undeveloped and ignorant. 
The modiste would not have trusted her with a piece of 
good material lest, for lack of knowledge, she should 
spoil it. What had she done, what was she likely to do 
with priceless material? 

She laid her hand on the girl’s shoulder and led her 
into the room where the half-unrolled bandage stretched 
across the floor. 

^‘Mary, you wouldn’t choose to be cruel. You do 
not really want to hurt the little children when they are 
frightened and sick and forlorn like that poor little 
thing in the bed the other side of the door ? ” 


102 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


Mary looked puzzled. “I didn^t hurt her, Miss 
Gray. I wouldn’t hit the children even if they let me.” 

Eleanor still looked steadily into her face. “Just 
suppose, Mary, that you and that little child changed 
places and you were the one in the bed : you had never, 
had a chance in your life: some rough, often tipsy 
woman had given you a mother’s love, had been the 
only thing which in your life had not brought pain. 
Then, suddenly, this one thing had been torn from you. 
Suppose you had gone through all this little child has 
to-day: been carried off by a policeman you were 
terribly afraid of, who brought you into the court where 
you understood nothing but the grim fear of the place; 
then other strange hands took you to the office of the 
society of the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which, 
not understanding, only roused in you more terror; 
and then, when night was creeping about all the un- 
familiar places and fear made you scarcely know your- 
self, you had come here to meet your own laughter and 
Miss Kennedy’s roughness; you had been put to bed, 
itself a new, untried experience; you were hungry and 
frightened; and the only comfort offered in this place 
supposed to be a refuge for little helpless babies — the 
terror of the dock rats and the black woman.” 

Mary’s funny little eyes were stretched to their 
widest capacity and two big tears rolled down her cheeks. 
“I never thought. Miss Gray. Indeed I didn’t mean 
no harm. I just wanted to stop her noise.” 

Eleanor’s hand still rested on Mary’s shoulder. 
“No, Mary, you didn’t mean to harm the child; but 
didn’t mean’ will not mend the wrong, you know. 


MARY RILAN’S LESSON 


103 


Think what it must be to be so tiny, so weak, so help- 
less and to find only life’s pain, its fear and its loneliness 
not to be able to do anything but just suffer and be 
entirely in the power of the people about you; not able 
to help yourself a single bit and to have your cries for 
help fall upon deaf ears.” 

The emotional Mary was sobbing. “I only done 
what I was told. No one knows better nor me. Miss 
Gray, just what a hard life is. Me own mother died 
just when I was turned twelve and I’ve had a bad 
enough time since. Sure, I ought to be the last one 
to make it hard for a young un and I’ll never do it no 
more, as long as I live. I’ll just say, if I was them 
and they was me what would I be a- asking of them. 
Miss Kennedy says you’re an awful fool with the kids, 
but I don’t care what she says. If you’ll learn me your 
ways I’ll do ’em every time.” 

The minutes had rolled away into an hour, yet there 
was no sound from the ward. The click of the band- 
age roller became intolerable. Eleanor put her work 
away. In the ward she found the little newcomer 
lying with wide eyes fixed steadily before her. Though 
she spoke the child gave no response. On the way to 
her room she stopped at the Infirmary door. Helen 
Foster’s vacant bed brought a longing to know how 
things were going in Mrs. Barnard’s night nursery. 
She would be there overseeing everything. The 
anxious girl-mother working, watching, hoping, and 
Dr. Wayne, in his quiet way, holding death at bay, 
while he gave comfort and courage and inspiration to 
them all. How many people everyday must bless him. 


104 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


How often his name must rise before the great white 
throne above in the prayers of those he had blessed 
and helped. But there were many who did not know 
what he had done, who never asked in words because 
they could not, like this little one who owed him her 
life. Eleanor drew the covers up and tucked little 
Dolores in tenderly. “ Poor dear baby,” she whispered 
as she kissed the soft white forehead. “For what he 
has done for us both you and I must love each other 
and because we are both alone; alone in a great wide 
world. We will love each other, won’t we, dear?” 

The child stirred in her sleep, threw her little arm 
out and as Eleanor bent low it fell across her shoulder. 
It was almost like a response. She lifted the baby in 
her arms. “ Oh, you darling, why hasn’t anybody ever 
loved you?” The child did not open her eyes, but her 
little arms clung tightly about Eleanor’s neck. The 
night nurse was coming from the dim distance. Eleanor 
kissed the baby’s soft cheeks, her tiny, dainty hands 
and laid her, still sleeping, back on the pillow. 

“Is it you. Miss Gray? I thought I heard someone. 
I wonder how the baby from the opposite corner is 
doing to-night? Dr. Wayne is just in his element — 
working to save a child there is scarcely a ray of hope 
for, and almost any one would say, has nothing to be 
saved for.” 

Eleanor smiled wistfully as she turned from the bed. 
“I suppose there is nothing in this world we are quite 
so ignorant of as the true value of life. We can only 
wonder.” As she passed out the door she turned to 
look once again at the shadowy corner where, against 


MARY RILAN’S LESSON 


105 

the pillow lay the refined, delicate face of little 
Dolores. 

The next morning Eleanor was not on ward duty, 
but at work in the drug room where Dr. Wayne found 
her. “I come to bring you news of our little patient,’’ 
he said. “She had a better night than we dared to 
hope and this morning there is much to encourage us. 
Katryn and Dorothy are not the least devoted of her 
attendants. You must come and see our annex ward.” 

Eleanor was radiant as she answered, “ How splendid 
it is of you and Mrs. Barnard to save the life of a child 
just by your goodness. You have done so many things 
of the same kind that I suppose it does not seem odd 
to you any more. But it doesn’t make it any the less 
wonderful.” 

He smiled down at her. “You are entirely mistaken. 
Mrs. Barnard and I have just become your disciples. 
Is not that it ? Some day you will have a big following 
and then there will be a revolution in institution life, 
and all the red tape of philanthropy will be ripped off, 
and tied on in quite a different and better way and all 
the works on ethics and moral philosophy will have to 
have a new chapter, and the author of it all will be the 
fair Eleanor, guardian of defenceless childhood.” 

She looked distressed. “Oh, please do not make fun 
of me. I could not bear it. You do not really think 
me egotistical, pedantic or quixotic, do you? All I 
know I have learned from you.” 

Before he could reply Miss Ford was at the door. 
“Will you have her taken right out to the carriage, 
Doctor?” 


io6 WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 

He answered Miss Ford hesitatingly, perhaps be- 
cause he was looking at Eleanor so curiously. “ If you 
will, have her brought down to the carriage, please. 
There is a maid waiting there.” 

Then he went away with Miss Ford, leaving Eleanor 
with a vague sense that there was something wrong. 
The noon sun was flooding the infirmary and the little 
trays were being carried to the dining-room when 
Eleanor next went on duty. 

Miss Ford was turning from the little patient who 
had come to fill Helen Foster’s place. She looked up 
with a smile of welcome. “I met a friend of yours 
last night when I went to one of the delightful musical 
evenings at Dr. von Boelte’s. We were in the dining- 
room when I chanced to quote you. Of course some- 
thing you had said on the ethics of infancy. He 
looked up quickly and said, ‘That sounds like a 
friend of mine.’ I said I was quoting my assistant. 
Miss Gray, and thus it came about that he told 
me he knew you. He asked all sorts of questions 
and wanted to hear everything I could tell him. 
We had quite a chat. Now I wonder if you know 
who it is?” 

Eleanor’s face showed more anxiety than pleasure. 
“Please tell me who it was? There are not many old 
friends I would care to have ask all they wanted to 
about my present life.” 

Miss Ford felt as she had often done before— that 
there was some great shadow in the life of her young 
assistant and she answered promptly to relieve her. 
“It wasn’t a bogy nor an ogre; but just a nice young 


MARY RILAN’S LESSON 


107 


man, Dr. Anderson. I hope you didn’t mind my 
telling him about you.” 

Eleanor’s face showed relief. “Oh, no. I do not 
mind in the least. We’ve known each other ever since 
we were little children. Why, you have a new case in 
Dolores’ bed. Where is she?” 

Miss Ford hung the new chart over the new case. 
“Some one came this morning with Dr. Wayne and 
took her away.” 

“Who was it?” Eleanor asked and the loving- 
tenderness of last night welled up in her heart. 

“I do not know; it was just a plain woman, a maid, 
I fancy.” 

“Where did they take her?” Eleanor asked. 

“To the country. Dr. Wayne said: a little vague and 
indefinite, I must confess, but all we may know,” Miss 
Ford said. 

Eleanor looked at the patch of sky across which 
fleecy clouds were drifting. “That baby has lived 
here all her life, yet the people who have taken care of 
her are supposed to have no interest in her, no affection 
no rights, no more than if they were mere automatons. 
I suppose those others are her own flesh and blood, 
people who have paid a paltry sum for her food and 
shelter. At their pleasure they transfer her to some 
other place to make her as happy or as miserable as 
they choose. Yet those who have made life for her, 
who have been in touch with her, given her care, per- 
haps love, must be satisfied with the indefinite informa- 
tion — she has gone to the country.” 

Miss Ford made a record on the chart, then with an 


io8 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


amused smile said, “It is just what I told you once. 
That apple has fallen out of the barrel into the pond, 
and the people who have to do with the barrel of apples 
have plenty more to think of and therefore are not even 
supposed to notice the circles that stretch out and out 
upon the water. Ah! you see, it’s another subject for 
The Ethics of Infancy. It is a subject that will be sure 
to grow.” 

She went down the ward, and Eleanor began the 
afternoon’s work with a dreary sense of disappoint- 
ment, as if there was no use trying to do anything in 
this weary world. When the floating clouds were 
touched with the sunset’s glow, she found herself 
wondering where the child with the strange dark eyes 
could be. Why had not Dr. Wayne told her when he 
came to the drug room? He knew she had taken care 
of her. He might have said something about it. She 
fancied she could feel the child’s little warm arms about 
her neck, and there was a strange sort of satisfaction 
in the sure knowledge that she was the first human 
creature who had won a caress from the reticent little 
shadow-child. Poor baby; had she thought of her 
or looked for her in the morning and when they carried 
her away? Had it been to something brighter or into 
greater dreariness? Perhaps she had reached out her 
little arms to her, Eleanor, as she had done that day 
when Gertrude Chester’s friends were so annoying. 
As the dark hung its black curtains before the windows 
she remembered that Dr. Wayne was with Dolores, 
and wherever she had gone it was with his knowledge 
and consent. This brought a reassuring comfort, but 


MARY RILAN’S LESSON 


109 


the ward seemed strangely empty; yet every bed held 
its tiny sufferer, and the tide of life was flowing on, 
strong and full and deep. 


“ Oh, little voices quick to comfort me, 

Oh, little forms that leaned against my knee, 

I envy the arms that take you in to-night, 

I envy the waiting beds so soft and white: 

A woman’s form was made to cradle a child. 

And this lap of loneliness will drive me wild.” 

Burden of Engela. 


CHAPTER XII 


THE LILAC BUSH AND THE STAR 

“Isn’t that a piece of the real country? I call it 
simple magic,” Miss Ford said as she stepped back 
from the window-box to which she had just given the 
last touch. 

Eleanor looked from the soft green leaves and deli- 
cate blossoms out beyond them through the open win- 
dow into the city, scorching and burning, hopelessly 
seared by the first great heat-wave. Some place in the 
heat below a child was drearily wailing; a little farther 
away a hand organ droned out “ Annie Laurie ” scarcely 
less dolefully. The air that came through the open 
window was like the breath from a furnace. Eleanor 
buried her face in the greenness of the plants, saying, 
“Poor things! it’s a shame to bring them from the cool 
country to suffer here.” 

Miss Ford heaved a heavy sigh. “Oh! dear, why 
did you say that ? I was hoping you would burst forth 
with something poetical, something about brightening 
our way, something to make us cool, for I promised to 
repeat exactly what you said when you first saw them.” 

Eleanor turned with a smile, “At least I said the 
truth. You should not make such foolish promises. 
I can easily fancy now that they must have come from 
Mrs. Anderson’s greenhouses.” 


10 


THE LILAC BUSH AND THE STAR 


III 


“You are very wise/’ Miss Ford replied. “I sup- 
pose that is where they came from, for Dr. Anderson 
sent them. He said you had always been fond of win- 
dow-boxes. He thought they would be nice for the 
children and we’d enjoy them too. He wanted especial- 
ly to know how you were. Don’t you ever see him? 
He is often at Dr. von Boelte’s and he always wants to 
know all about you — ^how you are.” 

Eleanor had grown very white of late. She looked 
out at the colorless stretch of the sky as she answered, 
“You cannot find much to tell him unless you try to 
remember all my stupid mistakes and those are too 
commonplace to interest Ned.” 

Miss Ford watched the brown eyes as she asked, 
“Have you always been comrades or chums, or what is 
it? You seem to have been pretty close friends and if 
I he wants so much to know I do not see why he does not 
come and find out.” 

Eleanor turned from the window and looked straight 
at Miss Ford as she replied, “When I was twelve years 
old I first knew Ned Anderson. We had one or two 
other friends of our own age. As the years went on 
chance and circumstance threw us more and more to- 
gether. We were all only children and I think we tried 
to make up to each other for the lack of brothers and 
sisters. I would not hesitate now to turn to him just as 
; I would to a brother; but things in my life have changed 
very much in these last few years and if I am to be happy 
jand do any real work I cannot keep up with the old 
I life: so it is just better not to see the old friends — ^but I 
do not forget them.” 


II2 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


Miss Ford broke off a pansy from a plant in the box 
and pinned it on Eleanor’s waist. “Tansies that’s 
for remembrance’,” she said. 

Eleanor turned to smooth the pillow and straighten 
the tumbled bed of the little patient who was rolling her 
head from side to side. She smiled at the child as she 
said to Miss Ford, “I wonder if remembrance is a 
blessing or a curse ? There is nothing can give greater 
happiness or bring more cruel suffering. How much, 
do you suppose, can these babies remember ? Do they 
treasure up a little bit of joy to live on through these 
long monotonous months or is it the bitterness of mem- 
ory kills them slowly ? ” 

“My dear young friend, this is too hot a day for you 
to evolve another chapter of the book. Be careful!” 
and she went down the ward to fill an ice-bag. 

Eleanor unfastened the pansy and handed it to the 
child. She took it in her claw-like hands and pressed 
it against her white cheek, opening and closing her 
mouth spasmodically, an odd habit she had whenever 
any emotion aroused her. Eleanor, as she smoothed 
the bed, watched her. Though she had lost all resem- 
blance to a clown she had made little or no gain, but lay, 
a white pathetic scrap of humanity. A weight hanging 
from the foot of the bed made her look much as if she 
were chained to earth lest she might slip away. 

Her hospital life had given her no color, no strength, 
though it had brought much skilful, careful treatment 
of the tubercular hip. When she had entered three 
months before, she had shown a certain fire and force 
which now she had quite lost; and in all that time once 


THE LILAC BUSH AND THE STAR 113 


only, since the wild outcry the night of the fright, had 
she said a word, and that was about a week after her first 
coming. Miss Ford had sent Eleanor to the Reception 
Ward to bring up the case that was to be transferred to 
the Infirmary. She found Dr. Mills bending over the 
little bed beside the closed door. Eleanor stood by 
waiting. How could such a little skeleton keep life, 
she wondered, as she looked at the trembling child. 

Dr. Mills took the probe from the table. The wild, 
shrill voice rang out, “Me mother, me mother!’^ and 
the little claw-like hands caught at his arm. 

“If you do that again I’ll stick this right into you,” he 
said, holding one of the instruments near enough for 
the child to see it. Then he turned to Miss Kennedy. 
“The channel is very long. It’s burrowed some dis- 
tance. It would be worth something to know its his- 
tory.” The probe entered again. Miss Kennedy held 
the child’s hands, but the cry rang out shrill again. 
“ One can’t work with such a noise going on. Can’t she 
stop that ? ” Perhaps it was the light in Eleanor’s eyes 
more than the child’s cries that irritated Dr. Mills. 

With her free hand Miss Kennedy reached the pillow 
and put it firmly down over the child’s face and head. 
“This is our private patent,” she said. “It’s wonder- 
ful how fine it works.” 

It was perhaps not more than a minute before Dr. 
Mills laid the probe on the table and replaced the ban- 
dage, but to Eleanor, standing watching it seemed like 
an eternity. The trembling, shrinking little body one 
great throbbing pain in the suffocating dark under the 
pillow. Not one touch of tender sympathy to reassure 
7 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


114 

the terrified little creature. When Eleanor carried her 
up-stairs she gave no response to her gentle words or 
caresses, only stared before her with unseeing eyes. 
That was January and this was April and the child 
— ^Annie Hogan — tubercular hip — had lain in the 
little bed taking whatever came in the same passive, 
hfeless way. 

Eleanor looked down at her pityingly as she thought 
of the past. This first great heat seemed to have 
touched her more than anything before: it had wilted 
her, taken away some of her life. She was holding the 
pansy against her cheek. Eleanor picked a piece of 
lemon verbena, held it toward the child, who sniffed 
curiously, then catching it in her hand she pressed it 
and the pansy so tightly against her face that when she 
took her little hand down they fell on the white cover, 
crushed and dead. The child bent over them a 
moment, then raising her face, full of distress, for the 
first time in all those months she cried out, “Oh, 
lady, look ! They’re deaded ! ” 

The tears were coming fast, but Eleanor with an- 
other pansy and a bit of the sweet verbena hastened to 
save the joy that had awakened the little voice. 

“ Hold them gently, dear, love them tenderly. Pretty 
flowers! Annie love flowers — flowers will love her,” 
she said, smiling down at the child as she gave them 
to her. 

Then for the first time Annie smiled back. But what 
did she know of tenderness or gentleness ? Eleanor left 
her laughing almost merrily, and went down the ward, 
smoothing the pillows and comforting the little sufferers 


THE LILAC BUSH AND THE STAR 115 

overcome with the heat. When she returned, shortly 
after, it was to find the flowers lying crushed upon the 
floor and the child with her face buried in her hands in 
dumb sorrow. Her very desire to love, to hold close 
the treasure, had made her crush and kill it. Nothing 
had ever taught her tenderness. It was like that one in 
the poem who even in Paradise crushed the young 
flowers. Everything in her life had been crushed, and 
unconsciously her very touch destroyed where it would 
caress. How strange and wonderful that this city 
child should have understood and responded to the 
language of the flowers when nothing else would touch 
her and she probably had never before been close to one, 
perhaps never seen one. 

Eleanor picked a spray of red geranium. It was 
stronger than the pansy, but the child would not touch 
it. As it lay upon the pillow she watched it and when 
by-and-bye she fell asleep her little cheek was very 
close- 

‘‘Subject for a new chapter — ‘How the Little Flower 
Undid the Harm Wrought by the Cruel Nurse.’ ” Miss 
Ford had stopped with a tray in her hands to watch 
Eleanor. “I heard her call to you a moment ago. I 
certainly am glad, but I expect you are in the seventh 
heaven, for I think you have worried over that child 
enough to keep you awake at night. Perhaps that is 
what has made you grow so thin lately.” 

“Are you going to put Miss Gray on the patients’ list. 
Miss Ford ? I’ve been fearing that would come sooner 
or later.” It was Dr. Wayne’s voice, and there he stood, 
a great bunch of white lilacs in his hand. As he held 


ii6 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


them out he added, “They are for the patients and 
nurses in the Infirmary. I have been to Craigmore and 
Philomena sent them back with me from Hill Crest.” 

Miss Ford took the flowers and went down the ward 
to arrange them. 

Eleanor asked, “Was it Mr. Schuyler’s idea or yours. 
Dr. Wayne, that Philomena should take care of the 
place and have the gardener’s cottage at Hill Crest?” 

As he put his finger on the child’s pulse he smilingly 
replied, “You always believe in going down to first 
principles. They went off in such a hurry, so soon after 
old Michael died, Mr. Schuyler really did not have any 
time to see about filling his place. I promised to do it 
for him. Both Philomena and Phillippo were so wretch- 
edly unhappy that something had to be done. When 
they went up the first week in January it looked dreary 
enough; but they were so glad to get where they could 
see sky and mountains they thought it beautiful, and 
now the fruit-blossoms and lilacs have made the country 
a bouquet — their happiness is just delightful.” 

Eleanor passed down the ward with the doctor. “I’d 
like to see Philomena again, but I couldn’t go there — it 
would seem like trespassing. I am so glad she is happy. 
She has never said one word of regret that it was for me 
she left her people and her country. What a loyal, 
faithful heart she has. Surely it looks out of her great 
eyes — a reproach to those who fail in trust.” 

“Her only regret,” Dr. Wayne said, “is that she has 
now no chance to serve you. She said this morning, 
‘ Oh, it was my lady that was the star that shone in my 
dark night of the bad pain. I did follow her so glad 


THE LILAC BUSH AND THE STAR 117 


and the good God He gave me the joy-light when He 
was one time ready for the dawn. And now it is when 
my life is all sunshine and the flowers bloom, my good 
Phillippo comes from the field with his face all shining 
for me, and my baby goes quick to meet him, and my 
heart is all light while my star it shines far away, where 
I can bring to it no service but just love’s flowers that 
grow where I hide its soft light in my heart and keep it 
always as my shrine.’ Then she brought the lilacs to 
me, looking as much like a picture as what she had said 
sounded like a poem. Spring at Craigmore has brought 
all the beauty we know and remember so well. The 
shrubs are in profusion of bloom and it all has made 
Philomena into the grateful, happy woman she must 
have been in Italy before her cloud fell.” 

Eleanor’s eyes were large to-night against the white- 
ness of her face as she turned toward the doctor. “ But 
it is the beauty of her own land that has sunk into her 
soul. I wonder if she has really come upon a truth, if 
every dark night of sorrow that comes to life has a star 
to lead the weary heart toward the joy of dawn some- 
where?” 

They were standing by the window in the hall. From 
below came a discordant jangle of children’s voices in 
the so-called play-ground, a place more like a huge 
sink than anything pertaining to the ground; — a cement 
or concrete flooring, the same material reaching up 
several feet on three sides, till it gave way to the brick 
wall: on the fourth side the building itself formed the 
boundary. Upwards of fifty children were turned into 
the stifling place to take the air. Eleanor turned from 


ii8 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


the wriggling mass below to Dr. Wayne’s strong, earnest 
face. 

He smiled at her as he said, '‘There can be no ques- 
tion about the star if we are conscious enough of the 
dark. If we feel the terror of the night and look up we 
can’t miss the star: and as to the dawn, we must all 
live in the hope of that, if we are to live at all. We 
have the certainty that if not here it will yet come 
‘otherwhere’.” 

“But when there is nothing left that we can hope 
for,” Eleanor persisted. 

“If we are really awake, alive to our own desires and 
needs, what is it we hope for ? ” he asked. 

She looked at the surging crowd below, then back at 
him as she said, “Even if we are like those children, 
unconscious of our needs, or, if like you and me, one 
has been quickened into an awful vividness of con- 
sciousness, hope is for just the one thing that makes life 
— love. When one is old it must be hard to let the hope 
die; but when one is young — oh, it is awful! Then 
one moves like a machine and counts for little in life.” 

“If you are a machine,” he said, “then let us all be 
so made. Do you know, Eleanor, there has never been 
a woman in all this world with a greater gift for waken- 
ing love than has been granted to you. The Infirmary 
is a different place since you and Miss Ford have been 
giving the children that personal touch of loving care. 
Its stamp will go with them through life, a mark of 
something higher than they have ever before known. 
For your own life is not this an assurance? You are 
only growing toward the fullness of life which must 


THE LILAC BUSH AND THE STAR 119 


bring a day-dawn of joy. You certainly are following 
your star — you may safely leave the rest. But, Eleanor, 
you can’t go on this way through the summer: this life 
must stop, you must have rest. Let your work wait 
until the fall. We will see then; only now you must 
leave it — indeed you must.” 

“Must, really!” Eleanor said, with a curious, amused 
smile. “Why must I? In fact how could I any more 
than the hundreds of other women who are supporting 
themselves? It makes me feel young to hear you tell 
me I must.” 

“You are young, quite too young to take care of 
yourself. You know that Mrs. Barnard would be only 
too glad to have you spend the summer at ‘Gulls’ 
Nest’ and the children’s welcome would be warm 
enough to tempt most people. You could dig in the 
sand with little Helen and help complete her recovery. 
Do you know, that father of hers is not half bad after 
all; he just got his back up against life and he snapped 
like any cat or tiger at everything that came his way. 
He didn’t half know what he was doing. Now Mrs. 
Barnard has offered him the use of the gatehouse for the 
summer, he turns out to be a first rate taxidermist. 
Professor Scott has him busy already and will easily 
keep him at work all season. He seems as happy and 
proud of his baby and home as if he had never tried to 
do without them. Do pack up and go down. The sea 
breezes, I believe, will save you an illness.” 

Eleanor shook her head. “O Doctor, you know 
I could not go and settle down for the whole summer on 
dear Mrs. Barnard. Work goes on in the big cities in 


120 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


the summer as well as in the winter. This first great 
heat will soon pass and after a little I will get used to it. 
I will have my holiday just as the others do, then I will 
go to Gulls’ Nest with joy and delight for the week I 
promised.” 

Dr. Wayne was watching her anxiously as he said, 
Your mother has written, asking how you are and to 
remind you that at any time you decide to join them you 
can draw what amount you need for your passage, at 
Mr. Schuyler’s office. But really, Eleanor, I do think 
she ought to make some provision for you.” 

Eleanor turned quickly toward him. “No, indeed,” 
she said. “ I have no claim upon Mr. Schuyler and as 
long as I will not do as he wants, I could not take 
anything from him. Now that I have learned to do 
something I am more glad than I can tell you, both for 
the sake of the work and for what must seem a less 
worthy reason — because I am assured of a place in the 
world and a shelter as long as I am well and able to 
work.” 

From the ward came the fretful murmur of unhappy, 
sick children, tired and wearied by the heat. Eleanor 
turned to the door. Dr. Wayne, standing behind her 
could see down the two rows of beds a change as if a 
breeze had passed through the heat of the ward. Every 
little face turned toward her and every pair of eyes sent 
a message as if by wireless telegraphy and shrill voices 
called to her. Little Annie Hogan held out both arms 
and called in her piping treble, “ Oh, come lady, come! 
You take the hotness away.” Eleanor passed into the 
ward and Dr. Wayne went on his way to the office. 


THE LILAC BUSH AND THE STAR 121 


Without looking up Dr. Mills greeted him. ^‘Two 
more children have just kicked up an awful row at being 
brought down from the Infirmary. Without seeing 
them you could write ‘Nostalgia’ for the diagnosis of 
every child that comes down. They just spoil them 
up-stairs and work the very mischief with them. Do 
you know, the ladies think they will not need Miss Gray 
through the summer?” 

Dr. Wayne turned quickly. “When will they tell 
her? I can quite understand how they, having seen 
a little only of her work, judging of it from what they 
hear, have naturally come to this decision.” 

The young house doctor hastened to assure him, “ Oh, 
there is nothing definite. Doctor. You know they had a 
meeting yesterday, or rather they tried to, but they 
didn’t have a quorum, so of course the ladies who were 
here could not act, but they had a very nice talk about 
things generally. They called me in and I was glad to 
have so many good things to report. They commended 
Miss Kennedy’s work very highly and are going to 
propose her for superintendent in the fall when Miss 
' Brown is married.” 

“You will not mention the matter of Miss Gray’s 
leaving to any one until the ladies have taken formal 
action.” The medical director’s eyes were a challenge 
and the young doctor understood that it was a command. 

Dark fell upon the city, bringing no abatement of the 
terrible heat. It was certainly a time for the “ survival 
of the fittest.” Hundreds of those weakened by work 
or by suffering were panting their lives away. Children 
lay upon the door- steps; men and women hung from 


122 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


the windows. The open cars were crowded with people 
trying to catch a breath of the air set in motion by the 
moving car. Policemen were kind and lenient to the 
throngs that crowded the squares and Central Park and 
lay panting and gasping beneath the dark, copper sky. 

Eleanor broke apart a spray of the white lilacs, giving 
each child a tiny cluster of the wee blossoms. She 
sang the story of a mother bird in a lilac bush where the 
breezes blew and the stars looked down. and there, 
where the flowers were sweet and fragrant, the little 
mother nestled her babies. As the song fell away 
and was lost in the far corners of the ward there was a 
chorus of sleepy cries for “more,” “more” and again 
she sang of the home in the lilac bush, of the mother’s 
tenderness, of the little ones’ joy, of the sweet scent of 
the garden, of the song of the brook, of the little breezes 
rocking the babies to sleep, of love in the little home 
under the stars. She sang it again and again. Even 
the children too young to follow the story which told of 
things beyond their ken were soothed and rested. Elea- 
nor had carried them all in fancy to the fragrant garden; 
the heat was forgotten ; the misery was thrust out of each 
little life and they were living in the happiness, the 
fragrance, the beauty of “the wee home nest.” The 
birds sang, the breezes fanned their cheeks, for they were 
in fancy’s land; and they fell asleep while the song 
went on and on, over and over again, not monotonously, 
but each time growing in strength of reality as Eleanor’s 
imagination pictured the thatched summer house beside 
which the lilac bush grew; the running brook below; 
the shady lawns that fell away on every side from where, 


THE LILAC BUSH AND THE STAR 123 


with its broad piazzas, stood Hill Crest. In fancy she 
heard the song of the brook, saw the far stretch of the 
hills as they reached out into the blue distance and all 
the beauty of the place that had been her home — and 
now she was homeless! The little family in the lilac 
bush had a right to the place: she had none. Through 
hot tears Eleanor looked at the children smiling in their 
sleep. Without rousing them she went softly away. 

The heat had turned the building into an oven; the 
city into a great furnace; and it was not yet the first 
of May. What would it be by the first of August? 
How many hundreds must suffer and endure — the 
weak, the sick, the little children and the old people, the 
hard-working and underfed men and women, huddled 
and crowded together in the big tenement houses. Yet 
there were people belonging to the great city who were 
so rich in homes that they could close up and bar cool, 
roomy houses in quiet streets — their comfort and peace 
a wanton waste, available to no one. She thought of the 
mad crowd in Saratoga, existing on fashion and excite- 
ment and mistaking that for life. 

The windows of six wards made long rows across the 
courtyard, and as she stood looking down at them and 
the rows of beds inside where lay the babies who had 
crept out of the shadowed corners of life, never quite 
reaching the real sunshine, she said, half aloud, “ They 
think their existence is life; the fashionable crowd 
think theirs is life; once I believed joy and love made 
life — now I know to how few this comes. Mrs. Bar- 
nard has known it and now she holds her true widow- 
hood — a blessed sorrow, as it were, a surety of what has 


124 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


been. But she is not like other people. There are 
hundreds of the ‘Chester’ type, who couldn’t compre- 
hend a great love; who live for what the world is going 
to say and just to gratify the desire of every day. To 
those who can understand love comes all mixed up. 
Poor Ned! why couldn’t he be happy with some other 
woman? Some one who would really love him — and not 
live a lonely life ? Dr. Wayne, too. Has he ever loved 
any one? or has his profession filled his life? Is it 
enough for him that others need him ? In the summer 
he spoke of needing help and inspiration. Yes 1 that day 
in the Rose Garden he said there was a sorrow which 
was always with him. He certainly lives as one who 
has found inspiration. How can he be so strong, so 
cheery, so brave? He has a man’s strength: I have 
only a woman’s. Woman can be steadfast, enduring, 
but she must have something to lean upon. Only 
eighteen months ago I was a child — now I am old and 
weary.” 

She leaned heavily against the iron bar that, for pro- 
tection, reached across the window. The tears came 
thick and fast — were they in pity for Dr. Wayne’s 
sorrow, her own desolation, or, in spite of the weight 
of years and worries, was she only like those other chil- 
dren, tired and weary with the heat and misery of life, 
wanting something that was undefinable. Was it a 
longing for her mother? — she knew well it was not. 
Had Mrs. Schuyler come down the hall, instantly the 
tears would have hidden themselves. She could cry 
there alone — perhaps it would bring relief. After all 
these months was she longing for Gerald ? — but her heart 


THE LILAC BUSH AND THE STAR 


125 


cried out “ No.” He was only a boy: she, Eleanor, had 
grown older than he ever would be. There was no- 
thing in all the world she could say she wanted, yet the 
longing and the yearning brought a pain greater than 
she could bear. Just to belong to some one; to have 
some one shield and protect her : it was a woman’s need, 
her right — nothing could ever quite make up for its lack. 
Dr. Wayne had said she must take a rest. That “ must ” 
belonged to what he had once called “the right of a 
friend.” She was just one of the crowd he worked to 
help every day as long as they needed him. They were 
so many cases. Then he transferred them and forgot — 
at least he must forget, for when she had asked him 
about Dolores, he had answered evasively, “ Oh, she is 
in the country with kind-hearted people.” Eleanor 
wondered if he had really made sure if they were kind- 
hearted and made the child happy. Had he even seen 
her? had he altogether forgotten her? Why had he 
gone away to-day and left her, Eleanor, alone when she 
felt so weak and dreary? He might have said some- 
thing to help her. She was like those other children 
who had no one — ^Abraham and little Annie and 
Dolores — ^yes, she was indeed like them, and they must 
all drift on in life because they could not die. Dr. 
Wayne had saved Dolores’ life — surely he could not 
forget her and to remember, with him, was to care. 
In the Infirmary Ward the fragrance of the white lilacs, 
the fancy of the little brook’s song and the bird’s happy 
home gave smiling dreams. Far above the stars looked 
silently and pityingly down upon the great city where 
the little children suffered. 


126 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


Eleanor remembered Philomena’s lesson of the star 
but even the thought of a dawn of joy seemed too far 
away and impossible to bring any comfort. Her heart 
echoed the protesting, dismal wail that came from the 
Reception Ward where a new case was just entered. 

Suddenly there was a vivid flash of lightning while 
almost immediately with a great crash, a thunder-bolt 
broke over the city and the great drops fell like a 
benediction upon the scorching world. As if to drive 
the fierceness of the heat before it the storm raged with 
mighty power. Each flash of lightning showed the 
steaming streets, the rows of dusty houses beneath 
the cool shower bath from the heavens. 

Presently little breezes stole through the windows and 
caressed the children lying in the long rows of beds. As 
the thunder died away and the storm settled into a cool 
gentle rain, Eleanor turned from the window, whispering, 
“Life is infinite; life comes from the Infinite and we 
with our finite comprehension, cannot know, cannot 
understand. When we can no longer endure, we can 
yet wait and trust — for that which is so far above and 
beyond us, which manages things for us — ^is perfect 
love.” 

“Oh, the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang west, 

And I said it in underbreath — 

All our life is mixed with death. 

And who knoweth which is best? 

Oh, the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang west. 

And I smiled to think God’s greatness flowed 
Around our incompleteness. 

Round our restlessness. His rest.” 

Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 


CHAPTER XIII 


THE SEASIDE HOME — THE SLUM PROBLEM 

'‘Say, teacher, it’s so hot you’d think that water’d 
bile. I wasn’t never so tuckered out afore in me life. 
I got a mad on all them other kids — they sez I’ve 
took a piece of candy off Lena and I never done it at 
all: they’s swiped it themselves.” 

Eleanor looked down at the child with the hot, 

' ruffled temper and general disheveled appearance, then 
, out at the blue stretch of shining ocean, as calm and 
undisturbed as a mill-pond. This was no time to 
urge the wisdom of harmonious living and peace: 

, only to make happiness overcome heat. She straight- 
ened the rumpled apron, smoothed back the tousled 
hair from the child’s heated face as she said, “I am 
coming to take charge of the playground this morning 
and if all the ‘mads’ can be put away I will tell a 
story like the one I told yesterday.” 

The child’s grin was vast and comprehensive. “ Oh, 
guns! that’s all right! There ain’t going to be a mad 
nowheres; I bet you there ain’t! Just come along.” 
She ran down the steps and across the sand to where 
fifty or sixty checked gingham aprons covered as many 
hot, panting little bodies. 

Nellie’s news was greeted with shrieks and yells of 
satisfaction. Soon the whole company had trans- 
127 


128 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


ferred themselves to the big pavilion overlooking the 
water and in the midst of the gingham aprons Eleanor 
sat, white and fresh, the shining of her brown hair 
seeming more than ever like an aureole for the pallor 
of her face. 

“Teacher, ain’t youse goin’ to tell us agin how the 
sea got made salt?” a lean, gaunt girl asked. 

“Oh! Frederica, you shet up — we knows that; we 
want somethin’ new,” a freckled child snapped. 

“We want it! we want it! about the salt and the | 
hand-mill ahind the door! Teacher, don’t you mind ! 
— go ahead!” 

There was danger of the “mads” returning, so j 
Eleanor hastened to take command. “Listen! I am . 
going to tell you one of the best stories that you ever 
heard, and it’s a very long one that will go on for days ‘ 
and days. It’s about a boy, a little chap, who had a 
hard time. His name was Tom and — ” 

But Nellie interrupted. “Me brother’s name is 
Tom and he has hard times enough along of the ■ 
lickin’s he gets off me mother when she stays out late : 
nights to the lager-beer saloon.” J 

A chorus of voices cried, “ Shet up, Nellie; jest you \ 
shet up!” and Eleanor went on with the story. 

“This poor little Tom had no mother, but a cruel, 
bad master. One day he ran away and was changed 
into a water-baby.” I 

There was a burst of “Ahs,” “Ohs,” “Golly,” 
“WHiat’s a water-baby?” and from Frederica, “Say, 
teacher, begin and tell it regular like youse did the one 
yesterday — Onct upon a time.” S 


THE SEASIDE HOME 


129 


So Eleanor began, “Once upon a time.’’ There 
was a flutter and a murmur as of many birds settling 
down to rest and the little company was silent and 
ready to listen. They forgot the heat as they went 
with little Tom out to the great deep, while just beyond 
them stretched the same wonderful sea, the waves 
making music on the sand below. 

Two days after the night of the thunder storm when 
the song of the nest and the fragrance of the lilac bush 
had come into the children’s ward and the thought of 
the star into Eleanor’s night, when the city seemed 
dusty and impossible and the building hot and stifling, 
Eleanor received a box of hepaticas growing in fresh 
moss and with it a note — 

“Dear Eleanor: 

“ This is a bit of the mountains. They have lived their tiny lives on 
the bank above the lake. I had three hours there yesterday — 
time to get much inspiration and a few blossoms. 

“The ‘Sea Shore Fresh Air Home’ opens the first of June. They 
need some one to do just such work as you can do for the little street 
Arabs and I have half-promised that you will go. Perhaps you had 
better write to Mrs. Chester, as Chairman of the Board, a formal 
resignation of your present position and ask to be relieved on that 
date. Many of the children from the ‘ Refuge’ will be sent to various 
Fresh Air places, so the ladies may be glad to reduce the force of 
helpers for the summer. While you are helping the children I trust 
the sea air may do something for you. Remember, August is to 
bring you to ‘The Gull’s Nest.’ Always your friend, 

Hubert Wayne.” 

It was now the last of June. Eleanor had been 
nearly a month in her new work, which certainly 
brought with each day some new phase of life and 
fresh interest. She found the average slum child quick, 
8 


130 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


shrewd, suspicious, yet amenable and responsive to 
anything that appealed to it. However miserable 
their lives had been, they yet kept their personality 
and individuality — they were human, not mechanical. 
But the mothers with their sick babies were a riddle; 
their ignorant efforts, their stupid blunders were as 
ineffective, as unreliable as anything could be. 

From the top of one of the buildings a great bell 
clanged. The children howled and squealed their 
disapproval, but Eleanor rose at once. “We will 
have to hear more about Tom to-morrow. See who ' 
can be first to the wash-house.^^ 

Off they went across the sand which was burning i 
in the noon- tide heat. In the meagre shadow cast by 
the board walk leading to the pavilion crouched a poor 
Russian woman with three babies. As Eleanor came 
down the walk the mother pointed to the eldest, a boy ^ 
of perhaps three or four, who lay, apparently half- i 
lifeless upon the sand — ^his face much the same color, 
his eyes half-closed. 

Eleanor bent over the child. There was no evi- 
dence of fever: he was utterly spent; all the snap 
gone. 

“You have only just come.” Eleanor smiled at the 
mother. “Wait until he has been here a little while: 
the sea air will revive him. He must have something [ 
to eat — ^what do you give him at home ? ” t 

The mother shook her head. “No, no! he no eat’ 
for long days. I give him bread, good, black bread; 
but he no eat.” c 

“Won’t he drink something?” Eleanor asked.^ 


THE SEASIDE HOME 


13 1 

What does he take at home ? he must have something 
now. Tell me what he likes when he is well.” 

The mother pointed to the other two children: 
both looked wretchedly ill. “ Bread, lady — black 
' bread zey eat with ze water: zat is all for all of us. 

; But for me — ze work, alles ze day and much ze night.” 

I ‘‘Poor thing! and what do you live for?” the words 
came involuntarily and were said to herself, half under 
her breath. 

But the Russian woman replied, “Only, lady, for 
we cannot die — we lives.” 

Ashamed of her thoughtlessness Eleanor said, “Do 
not be afraid. If there had been anything very wrong 
with him the nurse would not have let you bring him 
out here on the beach: they would have put him to 
! bed inside. Wait till he has learned to dig in the sand 
I and had a few dips in the salt water — he will begin to 
; get strong at once.” 

“Strong at oncet,” the mother repeated slowly, 
looking at the child with a dumb, stolid yearning. 

, Eleanor went toward the crowd of mothers carrying 
I sick children, who had evidently come in by the same 
train as the poor Russian. They swarmed over the 
white sand and stretched themselves in the sun so 
weary and glad to lie down that they were oblivious 
j of the heat. Their babies lay so half dead they noticed 
nothing or so frightened by the unaccustomed light and 
space that they cried with shrill, frightened moans. A 
I few who were stronger tried to climb away out of the 
i burning heat and each time were pulled back by the 
weary mothers. 


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Under the pavilion the sand was shaded. There 
Eleanor soon gathered the most pathetic mothers who 
had the weakest and most desperately ill children, while 
she dug in the sand for the instruction and amusement 
of a group of growing tots. There was a sudden cry 
— a shriek of wild terror that rang out above all the 
wailing of the babies. Turning, Eleanor saw the 
Russian mother standing in the water up to her knees 
and holding the sick child who had roused into a wild 
terror as his mother dipped him deep into the water 
until it closed over his head when she drew him up 
and stood long enough to catch her breath. In spite 
of the agony in his face, the heart-rending cries and 
the fierce efforts he made to clutch at her garments she 
stood, her face firmly set with definite resolve. Again 
the water closed over the little white face. A third 
time it would have been repeated but that Eleanor 
caught the trembling, frightened child from the mother, 
who only feebly protested, saying, “ Dip in ze sea make 
strong at oncet.” 

“ But he is sick and weak and you are frightening him 
to death, poor baby!’’ Eleanor said as the child kept a 
firm hold upon her while he gasped frantically for 
breath. He hid his face against her that he might not 
see the great stretch of water. The mother followed 
her, distressed. 

“I want make zem all strong: zey all sick. I would 
dip zem all in sea — zen zey get strong at oncet.” 

Eleanor’s brown eyes were pityingly tender as she 
led the way, carrying the trembling child while the 
mother followed with the other two babies to a quiet 


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corner of the piazza. There, the wet rags off and 
wrapped in a warm blanket, the child lay in a hammock. 
The mother huddled by the rail while the two younger 
children rolled up like puppies, leaning against her 
continued their disturbed nap. 

Eleanor drew a chair toward the hammock and 
sitting down looked into the mother’s face. Dull, 
limitless endurance was written there and blind, 
ignorant devotion looked out of the dark eyes. 

Slowly, reproachfully she said, “You no let me put 
ze babies in ze water? It is great big water, room 
enough and ze babies will no hurt it; but you no let 
me make zem well at oncet.” 

Eleanor laid her hand on the woman’s hard, brown, 
toil-worn one, and looked into her face. No words 
could have conveyed the message of love as that 
touch did. A strange light came into the dark eyes 
and bending over, the Russian woman touched her lips 
almost reverently to the little white hand. Eleanor 
had begun in a language she could comprehend; it 
was easy now. 

“Your baby does not understand — ^he is afraid of the 
water: fright hurts little children and you would not 
hurt him. He is very weak : you must be very tender. 
I will show you and you must try.” 

“I will try — ^will try,” the woman’s thin lips formed 
the words, but her eyes were full of question. 

When, a little later. Dr. Wayne turned the corner 
of the piazza his quick eye took in the whole picture — 
the blue summer sea stretching away into the far 
distance, the white, sunny sand dotted with the 


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groups of human creatures, and, in the corner of the 
piazza, the woman’s haggard, upturned face, intent , 
and anxious, Eleanor speaking gently, plainly, urgently, | 
her face white as the gown she wore, dark shadows under 
her eyes. 

As she turned and saw him her color came quickly. 
“I didn’t know you ever came down here.” Her eyes f 
were shining at him. 

“I never came before, but that is no reason why I 
should not make a beginning.” He was holding her 
hand and the comfort of his sympathy, his understanding 
flooded her life with a strange new courage and strength. 
He went on, “To-day I have come to uproot you, for I 
see you have taken firm hold of the new soil and I also 
see it is quite too much for you: you have made no 
gain here and again I say you must move on.” 

His words brought a strange sense of relief. Eleanor 
was surprised: she was like a child — more tired than 
she knew; and at the first word of comfort she wanted 
to cry. 

There was a strange brightness in her eyes as she 
said, “I like the work — it is so full of opportunity, so 
vital, so eagerly, anxiously awaiting help: but I am 
tired. Once you said I was not made for work. I 
am almost afraid you are right, yet I cannot give up 
this, however badly I seem to do it until something else 
offers. Have you anything to suggest?” 

Dr. Wayne was bending over the hammock. “ Poor 
little shaver,” he exclaimed, “just alive enough to en- 
dure. Such a miserable little specimen ! ” 

Eleanor answered softly, “Therefore needing help 


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and protection so much the more. All that mother 
has in the world are these three little children.’’ 

He turned to the baby, moved it gently, but it made 
a little cry of pain. As he bent over and laid his hand 
upon it the child shrank away, crying pitifully. 

Eleanor continued, ‘Maternal devotion is the only 
real, live thing about her. It is strong, deep, intense, 
and it is as ignorant and blind as it is real.” 

He turned from the children. “The baby is in a 
bad condition — it is ‘Scorbutus’; the little girl is a 
well advanced case of ‘Rickets’; and the third one, 
poor little fellow, seems scarcely more than half alive. 
Existence can be only a misery to each and all of them,” 
he said as he turned toward the sea, where, far across 
the blue waters a white speck showed where a ship 
went upon the watery highroad. 

Eleanor’s eyes followed his out to the ship as she 
remarked, “They are to have a fortnight here; how 
much will that count for?” 

“Nothing,” he replied. “In their condition there 
can be almost no hope. A radical change of food and 
life might accomplish something, but when they go 
back what will it be back to?” 

“To work and black bread; to bad air a^d misery; 
to dirt and desolation; to endurance and struggle; 
and yet that is all they know of life,” Eleanor re- 
plied. 

He looked back at the miserable group where the 
hammock hung in the corner. “There are compensa- 
tions we can’t know or measure, yet granting them, 
this would seem to us existence, not life, unless by life 


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you mean the mechanical workings of the various 
organs. What really is life ? ” 

Eleanor turned to him, her face much as if it had been 
chiseled from marble, as she answered, “ Once I thought 
I knew what life was — I thought it was beauty and 
love; but the years are teaching me more, giving me 
broader, wider understanding. Some day, I hope, I 
will grow into the knowledge of what it is.” 

He flashed one of his brilliant smiles back at her 
as he said, “Surely you will never grow to a greater 
knowledge than your first — beauty and love. The 
years may teach you a broader definition of what 
beauty really is and give you a more infinite compre- 
hension of what love is, but they cannot do more than 
that, for love is the one, the only answer, Eleanor.” 

She looked across the smiling sea. There was a 
deep minor note in her voice as she said, “If that is 
so, some of us must go on through the years and never 
have life at all.” 

He looked at her — slight and frail, young and alone, 
and then he turned quickly away and stood looking at 
the child in the hammock with unseeing eyes. 

Eleanor turned to him. “If, like ‘Little Joe’ I 
must move on, tell me where it must be this time. You 
carry other people’s burdens. I am afraid I am proving 
a very heavy one, but there is no one else in the world 
I can turn to. If it were not for you what would I do ? ” 
“You may call it a burden, but I call anything I 
may ever do for you a real blessing. It is little enough 
you let me do and badly I do that little; but I hope 
you will always believe that though I may be mistaken 


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and make failures it is not for lack of devotion or real 
I earnest desire,” he said gravely, without looking at her. 

Eleanor laid her hand on his arm. “ As long as I 
live,” she said, “I will never think anything you have 
j done is a mistake or that you have failed in anything a 
I friend might do. If other people thought you were 
I wrong I would just know it was their lack of compre- 
j hension; the blindness of their point of view.” 

I Dr. Wayne looked into the brown eyes, something on 
' his own she could not understand. “That is trust,” he 
said. “God grant I may never forfeit one bit of your 
loyal ideal of devotion. Don’t ever again think that 
anything I might do for you, Eleanor, could be a burden. 
You can’t know what it is to me.” Then he hurried 
on as if to cover up what he had said, “But I have 
come with a very definite plan: come to ask your 
help: to get you away from this glare and this rabble 
— ^no wonder you are just going to pieces. You have 
proved you are made for work, but it is the sort of 
work very few women can do. Miss Livingston sails 
to-morrow to take three young English children to 
their grandfather. He has promised to take them in 
and educate them, although he has never seen them 
because he considered his son had made a misalliance. 
She has been interested for more than a year in the 
mother who has made a brave struggle. She died a 
month ago. They all have been at her Lodge in the 
Adirondacks. She has brought the old grandfather 
to terms and she is going to take the children to him 
herself; but she cannot leave the Lodge without some 
one to manage her unique and original philanthropy. 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


138 

I promised her you would go. She came to town 
yesterday and we are to lunch with her in Washington 
Square to-day. She will hand you her books and 
give you her one injunction — ‘Take my people just as 
they are : don’t wish the Lord had made them different 
or, for the benefit of your acquaintance, that the circle 
of their lives had been more elevated; and whatever 
you do, make them happy.” 

“So you and dear Miss Aurelia have settled it all 
and I have only to obey. There’s more rest and peace 
in finding things all planned for you than most people 
are willing to admit — perhaps that’s because I am not 
strong and clever. I hope I have ability enough to do 
the work and please her. Dear Miss Aurelia!” 
Eleanor said, as the color came into her pale cheeks. 

“She certainly is a ‘dear,’ yet I think it will be 
easier for you with her on the other side of the water. 
You are to have carte blanche to do just as you like 
so long as you do not grumble about their faults and 
you make them happy; and if any one in the world can 
do that it is you. I told Miss Aurelia something of 
your work at the Refuge. She interrupted me in the 
middle of the story with, ‘ Why didn’t you tell me she 
was there before? Providence meant her for me, 
not wasting herself in such a hole; I can’t find any one 
with red blood to help me : every one who wants to do 
good has felt the chill of the tide of life and they are 
nothing but reptiles or fishes with floppers. Eleanor 
always had a normal heart and I expect sorrow has 
given it more strength and power: she has seen less of 
society and more of humanity. The good Lord has been 


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139 


particularly bountiful to her, but I expect she hasn’t a 
notion of looking at things in the right way — most 
people are such fools. But I will leave everything 
with her. You go bonds for her, that she doesn’t bring 
any machinery or red tape — just a clear head and a 
normal heart.” 

‘‘Oh, it’s so like her! so deliciously refreshing,” 
Eleanor said, smiling up at the doctor. “I feel the 
enthusiasm growing. We always used to laugh at 
poor Miss Aurelia and her philanthropies, especially 
The Lodge — but I don’t at all know where it is.” 

“Far away from here and everywhere: away up in 
the North Woods. Her work is as erratic as her place 
is beautiful. Any one who appeals to her finds a 
welcome — eccentric and remarkable as it may be it is 
both warm and genuine. I think you and Miss 
Livingston might easily set up a partnership. W’e’ve 
got to catch the noon train back to town, so hurry; 
you have only a few minutes,” he said as he turned 
toward the door. 

Eleanor followed. “But I cannot leave them here. 
Though you may think I am not much use, I count for 
something and they would miss me. It wouldn’t be 
honorable to walk off, even for Miss Aurelia.” 

“ Oh, even that is settled. It’s one of the cases where 
Miss Aurelia Livingston’s name counts for something. 
We went to the town office this morning: they released 
you and are to send some one down this afternoon. 
Can you be ready in twenty minutes? While you are 
packing, the Russian mother and I will talk about life 
in general, the sick babies in particular.” 


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Before the expiration of the twenty minutes Eleanor 
appeared. “It is astonishing how much one can 
accomplish in a short time/’ she said, as she came out 
prepared for the journey. 

“I found my task harder than yours and yet I think 
that we have not wasted our time.” He smiled down 
at the poor woman crouching there with her babies. 
She, suddenly comprehending that Eleanor was leaving, 
rose upon her knees, reached forward, caught the little 
white hand in her great, clumsy ones and pressed her 
lip against it, as she said, “Ze good God bless, give 
happiness and children and all good things.” 

As the train dashed across the country Eleanor 
forgot that it was hot and that she was tired; she was 
like her old self and there was a prospect of usefulness 
among her own people. Miss Aurelia might be ever 
so eccentric; there would be always a bond — they would 
understand one another . . . She wondered if that 
was why she felt so young, so light-hearted. 

Dr. Wayne, too, seemed quite satisfied with life: 
though the train was crowded and the heat great, 
neither of the travelers in the first seat of the car seemed 
conscious of it. 

“How selfish we are,” Eleanor said, after silently 
watching things fly by for a time. 

“Why, what in the world are we selfish about now?” 
he asked. 

“An hour ago I was determined to help that poor 
Russian mother; but I have turned away without 
hesitation, also without doing anything,” Eleanor 
replied. 


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141 


‘‘Ah! yes; but you told me to do it.” 

“Only because I saw there was nothing to do and it 
was a cowardly way of shifting a burden: but there 
really isn’t anything one can do, is there? Do you 
ever admit that of anything in the world?” she asked. 

Dr. Wayne looked into the eager face. “ Remember, 
only a short time ago you gave me assurance of your 
trust and confidence — after that I couldn’t fail. The 
woman seems hard-working and heroically unmurmur- 
ing, but with as much ability and power of work as a 
nice, big dog. Yet there is always a place for every one; 
remember that, Eleanor, and the result of all help is 
just to find that place. She will be here for two weeks. 
By that time I am sure that that splendid old solver of 
hard problems, Jacob Riis, will have made a place for 
her out in his Jersey Settlement where she will learn 
how to live. He will take care of her, you need not 
worry.” 

Even the grass in Washington Square seemed tired 
of the city, possessed of a longing to be country grass 
that would grow into nice sweet- smelling hay: but as 
they passed through the doorway of the old-time broad 
brick house, a cool fragrance met them and from the 
dim distance came a shrill voice, “Bring the child 
right up here, Hubert Wayne. I expected you both 
had a sun-stroke or some other new-fashioned malady. 
No one ever had heat prostrations when I was a girl. 
They accepted the climate the way the Lord sent it 
and never rebelled, spiritually, mentally or physically, 
or set themselves up on a pedestal to decide whether 
it was too hot or too cold. Well, child, luxury hasn’t 


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been the besetting sin of your soul lately, I should 
judge — you look about as substantial as a spider web. 
It isn’t the flesh, it is the will accomplishes; some- 
times it is an advantage to have little to carry about. 
There, sit right down and let me look at you. William 
is bringing you something cool. Why, child, how like 
your father you have grown! If you are as much like 
him on the inside as you are on the out, you’ll under- 
stand me and know that it is the heart counts. One’s 
manner is hke one’s clothing — not made to please 
every one in style or appearance. Hubert Wayne, you 
aren’t much of a doctor if you can’t do something for 
that child.” 

Eleanor enjoyed the cool, delicious fragrance of the 
big room, with its quaint, old furniture and tried to 
reassure her old friend how well and strong and ready 
for work she was. 

And then William came with a great silver tray 
which had served many a colonial dignitary — the 
delicate glasses almost like soap bubbles, the great 
bowl of cracked ice and the quaint, beautiful claret 
jug — all like the old life, so far, far behind, in which 
Miss Aurelia had always been a unique figure. There 
she sat just as she had always done — ^her black hair 
smooth and shiny (it was one of her griefs that it had 
never turned gray) and upon it an immaculate and 
wonderful white cap, the strings reaching far down the 
back of her silk gown over which she wore until lunch- 
eon, every day of her life, wherever she might be or 
whatever she might be doing, a black silk apron. She 
sat as straight as if she were seventeen rather than 


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143 


seventy. There was a strange, tender warmth in the 
little sharp, black eyes as they rested upon Eleanor. 

“So you will take care of The Lodge and all my 
poor people ? Don’t ask of them perfection and they 
won’t ask it of you. Just be happy and make them 
happy. Hubert Wayne says you have a wise head and 
not a bad heart; I decided to go to England when he 
said he would go sponsor for you. You have your 
father’s eyes and if you have anything of his nature 
you’ll have no trouble and I’ll make a thanksgiving. 
Maybe I’ll be gone a month and maybe three; I may 
die on the other side, but as I always go prepared for 
such an emergency, it will make no special difference.” 

At the lunch table Eleanor felt the black eyes again 
watching her. “So like your father, child! You’d 
better wait until my boat sails — it’s the first time I have 
been abroad since Ardelia left me. It won’t delay 
things if you both wait and see me off and say good- 
bye. I shall go without a worry, without any anxiety. 
I know you will take care of my people and like your 
father you will never harden your heart to the cry of 
a child.” 


“ Like the tide on a crescent sea beacl\ 
When the moon is new and thin, 
Into our hearts high yearnings 
Come welling and surging in — 
Come from the mystic ocean 
Whose rim no foot has trod — 
Some of us call it longing 
And others call it God.” 


Professor Carruth. 


CHAPTER XIV 


THE NORTH WOODS — MISS AURELIA’ S WORK 

“Heaven only knows when I will see this precious, 
hot, dusty New York again. You can sit there on 
that coil of rope, children, only don’t wander away. 
Hawkins can be trusted to see that you don’t get lost. 
I am going down to the gang-plank to see the last of 
you, Hubert Wayne. Remember my will; it is to be 
carried out to the very letter. If I don’t return on the 
passenger list all that is necessary for the other kind of 
return passage is down in the hold ready for use — 
having things ready is not going to hurry the good 
Lord’s time. Remember, you are the sole executor 
and no one else is to put a finger in the pie. I’ve left 
it to your care absolutely and if you spoil it, it will only 
prove there wasn’t any one in the world capable of 
serving it properly.” 

Dr. Wayne laid his hand on the little old lady’s 
shoulder as he said, “Dear Miss Aurelia, if you go on 
growing younger every year I shall never have the 
opportunity of showing my appreciation of the honor 
you have conferred upon me by carrying out your 
wishes; so you will have to give me some test or trust 
by which I can prove my devotion while you are alive.” 

“Oh, don’t be a fool, Hubert Wayne! You must 
know you are an honest man and so there is nothing 


144 


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145 


could flatter you— honesty is such a rare accomplish- 
ment. While I am gone you will have to keep your 
eye on Eleanor or she’ll just fall to pieces as her father 
did: catch something and go right off — overworked 
and worn out. You can see with half an eye she is a 
chip of the old block. Her mother is quite another 
grain. When you get to ‘The Lodge,’ child, don’t 
let yourself get tired. I was never tired in my life; 
it’s just the way you take things — ^worry is only spiritual 
near-sightedness. No one is called upon to do more 
than they can. You can’t put a week’s work into a 
day — don’t try it: you will only spoil what you might 
have done in the day and yourself in the bargain,” and 
j Miss Aurelia snapped her little black eyes merrily and 
smiled at Eleanor, who smiled back at her as she 
|i answered, “I am only afraid of failing to fulfil the 
I' ideal you have for your work, dear Miss Aurelia. Do 
' not worry about me. I will do my very best and that 
is the most any of us can promise.” 

“ Oh, you won’t fail,” was the reassuring answer. 
“You are like your father and he never failed in any- 
I thing. Ardelia prophesied, when you were only a 
! little child in pinafores, that before you died you’d 
, do something for the world that was worth while, and 
|1 Ardelia never made a mistake. That’s why she was 
taken out of this world that is all mistakes. God 
r bless us all! And you two — feel as if you are both 
: my children.” The little old lady laid her hands on a 
^ shoulder of each and looked up, her great heart shining 
I out through her bright little eyes with an infinite tender- 
I ness. “If I shouldn’t come back I’ll go on loving you 
9 


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two wherever I may be and I believe you would be my 
true mourners. I haven’t either kith or kin in the 
world, but you’ll not let me be carried to a loveless, 
unmourned grave. It often worries me — the thought 
of being laid in the old vault with the city making its 
row all about and of course certain friends, properly 
and decorously clad in black, pulling their faces down 
to a conventional mourning length, watching lest the 
grass be damp — no one to feel that a cold made no 
difference, or to miss seeing the dew on the grass 
because of the tears in their eyes and the real heart- 
breaking pain for the emptiness that showed in their 
life because my old heart had stopped beating.” 

“All aboard!” “The very last call!” “All ashore 
quickly!” The captain stood ready for the signal — 
the sailors held the ropes. 

Hubert Wayne said, “Dear Miss Aurelia, there will 
be hundreds the poorer when your life goes. Among 
those that mourn, my heart and my affection, if not my 
blood, will give me a right to a place in the front rank. 
Just all you have done for my life you can’t know.” 
He lifted the little old lady quite off her feet in his 
strong arms, kissed her and put her down. Eleanor 
kissed her; whispered something. Miss Aurelia pressed 
both their hands. “Be good to each other. God 
bless you both!” 

And they were on the pier and the ship slowly moving 
out of sight. 

As the cab threaded its way through the crowds, 
Hubert Wayne said, “ What a heart dear Miss Aurelia 
has; how does such a little body hold it? Who else. 


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147 


after they were seventy years of age, would have sup- 
posed they could have started for Europe with three 
strange children?” 

Eleanor looked through the window at the teeming 
mass of horses and men as she said, “I believe one’s 
heart counts for more than anything else in the world. 
No matter how people struggle, or fight, or try, if they 
have not a big heart, their life is bound to be small and 
narrow and make failure of its obligations. I do hope 
that I will not fail in sympathy or goodness or tender- 
ness to her people. May I call upon you if I get mixed 
up or in trouble about things?” 

“That is my privilege,” he answered; “to serve you 
whenever it is possible. But you will not fail — you have 
as much heart as Miss Aurelia and ten times the prac- 
tical common sense. I have promised her to go up 
and look after you, after a time : and if she decides it is 
necessary to stay on the other side until November or 
December, as she fears she may have to, you are to 
leave things in David’s hands and between the summer 
and autumn work come to ‘The Gull’s Nest’ for the 
promised visit. In September she has an odd, motley 
crowd, all sorts and ages — cases threatened with 
decline, that come back after three or four months at 
‘The Lodge,’ almost invariably complete cures. You 
will have time just to get your breath before I send 
the first of the summer party to you, the day after to- 
morrow. I have the list and promised to see them 
started safely. You must never hesitate to call upon 
me for anything in the world I can do to help.” 

As the train went north, Eleanor sat on the river 


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side enjoying every play of cloud shadow on the water 
and across the face of the sparkling Hudson. It was 
an exquisite summer day and the glow of Miss Aurelia’s 
loving farewell, of Hubert Wayne’s kindness, made her 
heart beat fast. As the hours wore on, passengers 
complained of the heat, of the dust and dirt and smoke, 
but Eleanor was imconscious of discomfort. She was 
going to a new work with enthusiastic delight. 

When, at sunset, she climbed down from the high 
seat on top of the Blue Mountain stage, at the little 
wayside station, to the welcome of David Pendergast’s 
greeting, she felt the first breath of the North Woods, 
which brought new strength and vigor. 

As the old gray horse jogged up the rough mountain 
road, David gave her vast and valuable information 
about the farmers, the guides and the dogs, the Garnet 
Mountain and ‘The Lodge’ itself. 

“Ye ain’t over strong, be ye ? ” he asked as he stopped 
by a hollow log to let the horse drink. “Ye luk as if 
ye hadn’t much meat on yer bones. But then Miss 
Aurelia ain’t much more than what ye’d call poorly 
and ain’t been for the past twenty year. Yet she gets 
through more work than any woman I ever see. Ge 
lang, Jenny — it’s time ye were getting to ‘The Lodge.’ 
Sally, she’ll have the supper waitin’. Them ‘thank- 
you-marms’ seem to kind of startle ye,” he said, as they 
went over a ridge in the road. 

“I’m certainly not Miss Aurelia. I haven’t her 
ability, but I must have more strength. Tell me about 
‘The Lodge,’ David. Dr. Wayne said I was to depend 
upon you for everything.” 


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149 


David chuckled. “I tell ye what, Dr. Wajuie he’s 
an awful smart man. I expect them New Yorkers 
think they’ve done a mighty clever thing to get him to 
settle right down in their city, an’ I expect they ain’t fur 
wrong. I don’t jest see how one man’s head can hold 
as much as hisen does. There ain’t much to tell about 
‘The Lodge.’ Miss 'Livingston, she had her own 
idees and it had to be jest so. She wouldn’t have the 
bark taken off the trees: the house is built of ’em, 
jest as they growed. It sots back mebbe a hundred foot 
from the water. Mebbe the noise of that water will 
bother ye a spell. Ye see, here the Hudson ain’t a great 
river like ’tis down where ye come from — but it’s got 
all the spunk and the go in it jest the same. Its bed 
is one great cobble-stone way — ye can walk across from 
shore to shore and if ye’re keerful and had yer gum 
shoes on ye wouldn’t get yer stockings wet a mite. 
But tearing over them stones so fast it makes an awful 
hollering noise. Some folks don’t like it, but Miss 
Livingston she jest loves it. It’s a real handy to be 
so near the water. Sally she has her big pot down there; 
she jest buckets in some water on the linen, sets some 
sticks under the pot and biles ’em right there by the 
river; she heaves ’em out right into the running water 
— ye don’t get no sech color with your stationed wash- 
tubs as Sally gets washing ’em there in the running 
river. See, yonder! there’s ‘The Lodge’ jest a-peekin’ 
over the hill and there’s the river — if you jest hearken 
ye can hear it calling to ye.” 

At that moment the spirit of the place, its wild, ex- 
quisite beauty, with the music of the river and the glory 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


150 

of the mountains, entered into Eleanor’s heart just as 
it had done, ten years before, into Miss Aurelia’s; and 
she felt the same longing, to help it bring its message 
of health and happiness to cramped and weary human 
lives. 

There they were in full force, the party Hubert 
Wayne had seen started safely on its way. 

Eleanor had been only two days in the North Woods, 
but already her face showed the effect of the change. 
As David deposited them, one by one out of the carry- 
all and she identified them with the list he had brought, 
she wondered if she had the power to help them find 
the beauty and joy of life and readjust themselves to 
these wonderful new conditions. 

Maggie Apple, perhaps nineteen, tall, gaunt, ex- 
pressionless; Marks, a little Arab, not more than four 
or five, bright eyes, dark swarthy skin and two little 
crutches; Sonny, could not have been five — merry, 
freckled, mischievous and in a plaster jacket; Lily — 
a wayside one that had bloomed always in the dark, 
for perhaps seven or eight years, and so had no color, 
no life; Lizzie Leonard — fourteen, large, awkward, 
shrewd eyes, a kind mouth and a pair of crutches; 
Baby Bell — a little, timid creature, perhaps two years 
old, whose father was in hiding from the police; Bertie 
Miller, eight years old, just home from hospital; 
Abraham Goldman and YettaMorgenstein, whose days 
in the Ghetto had squeezed most of the life out of their 
frail bodies; Leslie — a pathetic little creature with a 
stiffened, twisted body and the face of an angel, who 


THE NORTH WOODS 


151 

had spent six of his ten years in the one position in 
which the disease had caught and bound him when 
scarcely more than a baby; and last, three pathetic 
scraps of humanity named Lynch, who were only one- 
quarter of the family — the older ones worked with 
their mother in a sweat-shop while these little ones 
took care of each other and never expected anything 
of any one. 

So the new life under the great oaks, within the sound 
of the river’s sweet music began. To some of the 
children it was unmixed delight; some only grew into 
its beauty little by little; and a few were frightened at 
the great space, the silence and the utter strangeness 
of it all. 

It was the morning after the arrival that little Leslie, 
propped up by cushions on a great rug under the trees, 
looked up with radiant eyes. “ I guess this is the way 
heaven is going to be, only we’ll never have to go back 
to earth and the crowds and the hot streets ’cause 
heaven is going to be always and always.” 

Lizzie, leaning awkwardly on her crutches, looked 
down at Leslie and remarked, ‘‘You could yet right 
up and trot around if it was heaven and I wouldn^t 
need them crutches. I think when you get your legs 
then it will be sure enough heaven.” 

Leslie’s clear voice said, as the river ran on its way 
making a sweet accompaniment — “’Tisn’t legs, Lizzie, 
as makes heaven: I expect it’s the hearts. I guess 
you don’t ever think, one way or the other, about 
walking. It’s the happiness and the love and the kind 
of heart you’ve got.” 


152 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


Maggie Apple, who had not spoken since she came, 
unless to give brief, curt answers, turned sharply upon 
the child. “Shut up! what do you know of heaven? 
I hope it won’t be like this place.” 

Eleanor looked into the girl’s face; there was a stolid 
endurance, a stubborn sort of resistance written there. 
“Come, Maggie,” she said, “help me gather some 
flowers by the little brook; we’ll find some beauties.” 

The girl did not move. “ I don’t like to pick flowers; 
I didn’t never in my life have any to pick and I’m too 
old to begin.” 

Eleanor smiled at her, remembering Miss Aurelia’s 
injunction. “You come with me and I’ll pick the 
flowers. I’m going down to the store; wouldn’t you 
like to see a real country store?” 

Maggie slowly rose. “If it’s anything like a city 
store I’d walk my feet off to see it.” 

They went down the pretty country road, Eleanor 
chatting pleasantly, the girl falling behind, sullen and 
silent; and when they reached the store — post-office 
and department store in one — she made no effort to 
conceal her contempt. On their way back Eleanor 
stopped by the brook to gather an armful of wild roses 
and honeysuckle. Maggie sat down on a fallen tree, 
coughing badly. 

Eleanor came and sat beside her. ‘'Maggie, you 
are not well,” she said. “You must let me take care 
of you and see if we can’t make you strong and get 
rid of that cough.” 

The girl made no response and Eleanor asked, 
“Have you any pain, Maggie?” 


THE NORTH WOODS 


153 

The answer was muttered, “It ain^t got far enough 
along for that yet.” 

“What hasn’t got far enough along? Tell me, 
Maggie,” Eleanor persisted. 

“Why, the consumption. The doctor said if I 
could stay up here six months ’twould break it all up 
— it was only just starting. But lands! I’d rather 
die of consumption any day than this lonesomeness. 
I’ll have to go back. Miss Gray, or I’ll just be dead on 
your hands,” the girl said with a shudder. 

“We are not lonely here, Maggie. You’ll soon get 
used to the place,” Eleanor said, very gently. 

“ Get used to it! If I was in my grave I suppose I’d 
have to, but while I’m able to walk — no, never! Just 
think. Miss Gray, from my window at home I could 
reach right out and touch the Ninth Avenue Elevated, 
for they turn around the corner where I live and I can 
hear ’em all night on two sides of me and we are near 
enough to the river to hear the boats whistling, and 
the beer wagons begin early in the morning and it’s 
all so lively and cheerful-like. I was born in an insti- 
tution for babies; I growed up in an Orphans’ Home; 
when I was ten years old I went to work in the big 
box factory up on Houston Street and everybody is so 
friendly — even if they get ‘mads’ on you, you know 
there is somebody there and you ain’t got any of this 
awful lonesomeness. Last night I didn’t darst close 
my eyes, it was so dark and still. I just sot up and 
held tight on with both hands to the iron bar of my 
bed. I think I’d given everything I had to hear one 
of them truckmen swear.” 


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WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


“But, Maggie, couldn’t you hear the river speaking 
to you all night long? It tells me such beautiful, 
wonderful things. I like to waken and listen to what 
it is saying and then fall asleep and dream about it,” 
Eleanor said. 

But Maggie shook her head. “No, no, I don’t 
want to hear nothing like that. When Miss Livingston 
asked me to come to the country, I didn’t know it was 
to any such place as this or I tell you I’d never have 
stirred. I’d never been to the country but onc’t before 
and that was when they took a new partner into the 
Box Factory and he gave the girls a sail up the river on 
a barge and there was music and lemonade and dancing. 
Then we stopped for an hour and all got off in the 
country and there was two merry-go-rounds and a 
loop-the-loop and a flying machine and a shooting 
gallery and a two headed woman that told your for- 
tune and a man with a fish’s tail for legs that could 
tell you all the things as ever happened. He didn’t 
always get them right, but you’d know for sure they’d 
happened to someone and in the crowd he just got you 
mixed up with another girl. They sold peanuts and 
pop-corn and pink lemonade there, and oh! it was 
just lovely I It wasn’t like this kind of country. That’s 
what I thought I was coming to. Just now at the box 
factory, they are having lunch — they gives us half an 
hour. Me and two other girls buys a pie and some- 
times we each get a cup of coffee and we have lots of 
fun.” 

Eleanor looked into the girl’s face. Her life had 
been squeezed into such narrow confines that it was 


THE NORTH WOODS 


155 


pinched and dwarfed past the power of feeling joy, of 
going out to meet a greater or a stronger force than she 
had known. 

“You have come here, Maggie, to grow strong, to 
get new life. You cannot tell how much may come to 
you in three months. There is so much to make you 
happy here where everything about you is full of 
wonder and surprise and beauty. I will tell you stories 
about everything. You are so much older than the 
others that I am sure you will help me and I will try 
to help you.” 

But the girl again shook her head. “IVe worked 
all my life; doing my own work is as much as I can 
manage without helping any one else. I don’t care for 
stories. I’ll have to go back and just cough it out and 
die the way lots of girls does, or I’d die right off. Miss 
Gray, if you have any heart in you, you’ll send me back 
to-day.” 

As they came down the pretty, wooded path, the 
little brook running over mossy rocks, here and there 
making a tiny water-fall, but ever and always singing 
its sweet, happy song and the shadows of the sunbeams 
playing in the pathway, Eleanor told the story of the 
Garnet Mine hidden away in the mountain before 
them, of the men who worked there, of the treasures 
they brought forth, — but by no change of expression 
did the girl show the least interest. 

For two days Eleanor struggled to bring some light, 
some joy into Maggie’s darkened life, without success. 
But the nights, when she clung to the bars of the iron 
bed, refused to lie down, hid her face in her arms, 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


156 

moaning and groaning to the disturbance of the other 
children — these were intolerable both to the poor 
frightened creature and to Eleanor, who resorted to 
every device without avail. 

When David had put Maggie safely in the Blue 
Mountain Stage a great sense of relief and peace 
settled down upon the family at ‘ The Lodge.’ Maggie’s 
poor life had lost the power of happiness — it was too 
late. But the others, — they were young and pliable, 
their hearts had not dried up, and Eleanor made those 
days one long stretch of happiness whose brightness 
would lighten many a weary year or, as it might be in 
Leslie’s case, give such assurance of love that he could 
go without fear toward the other life. 

And so the summer slipped away, bringing letters 
from Miss Aurelia, often a message or supplies or 
something for the comfort and happiness of the family 
at ‘The Lodge’ from Hubert Wayne. 

Up in the North Woods the golden- rod was decking 
all the hillsides and the hips and haws made crimson 
bits where earlier the pink roses had been. The 
clematis hung out its old man’s beard and, though it 
was only the first of September, the maple trees made 
splashes of gold and crimson on the hillsides, which 
were reflected in the running river that carried the 
message of autumn swiftly down to the big cities where 
men live such quick, hard-pressed lives, they might 
forget the flight of time if something did not come to 
tell them. 

There were fall openings in the big city; the school 
rooms were being made ready, and Eleanor was 


THE NORTH WOODS 


157 


looking at the glory of the September world and 
wondering what next would come to her. The river 
seemed calling back a message as it ran on and on 
between the everlasting hills. 

“All the strength of the world and all its beauty, all true joy, 
everything that consoles, that feeds hope or throws a ray of light 
along our dark paths, comes to us from people of simplicity, those 
who have understood that the art of living is to know how to give 
one’s life.” 


CHAPTER XV 


“the gull’s nest” — THE GOLDEN WEEK 

“ Oh, the dear, dear sea : it is the sunset of the day and 
the sunset of the year and it is just one great opal glory.” 
Eleanor turned her face, radiant and happy, toward 
Hubert Wayne, who stood waiting to help her into the 
little phaeton while he gave back an answering smile 
of happy comprehension. 

“ September is a wonderful month and when one has 
borne the burden and heat of the summer day, rest is 
very welcome and delightful, especially when it comes 
with the amber and bronze setting of autumn. As 
Katryn said last night, this week that we are to have 
you with us is to be the ^ perfectest’ of all that has come 
to ‘The Gull’s Nest’ this summer.” 

They were riding along the quaint little street where 
the sea captains built their houses endwise toward the 
water and with humped roofs as though their homes were 
their old vessels turned upside down. 

Eleanor said, “ This has been a wonderful summer — 
the nursery, the sea-side home and the North Woods, 
all so full of opportunities for doing work, for helping 
to right the wrong that it makes one almost afraid. 
Life seems such a terribly sacred, mighty responsibility. 
I used to think that dances and golf and riding and 
boating made up the work of a summer, and now it 
158 


“THE GULL^S NEST’^ 


159 


seems as if one had no right to rest when there is so 
much to do that is worth the doing. I haven’t got to a 
poke bonnet and a bag of tracts yet; but I am afraid it 
is coming.” 

Hubert Wayne replied, “I fancy the poke bonnet 
would be becoming and do you not think you are 
enough of an adept at preaching for the tracts to be quite 
unnecessary?” 

They had come out on the downs and the little white 
ponies were carrying them toward the sunset. 

Eleanor looked serious. “Don’t you really think, 
Doctor, that I am a sort of changeling or that when 
Eleanor Schuyler turned into Eleanor Gray, she became 
a different personality? Think how utterly and com- 
pletely everything has changed : yours and Miss 
Aurelia’s friendship is really the only touch of the old 
life.” 

Hubert Wayne drew the ponies up and sat looking 
before him. The opal sea was gently lapping upon the 
sands that were turned to gold in the sunset light. The 
beach ran, a long unbroken curve, to a point reaching 
far out into the water on which stood a Refuge or 
Humane House. Close to the point where they waited 
the ragged boulders and jagged rocks turned the waters 
into foam and sheltered the beach, where, against the 
tangled brown kelp, with exquisite motion the waves fell 
away with a musical murmur; and just above, scarcely 
out of their reach, the wild sweet pea bloomed luxuriant- 
ly. Farther on was a stretch of sand where the hulk of 
an old vessel had been cast up to bleach and bask in the 
sun after traveling many seas, and far away through the 


i6o 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


golden stillness came the voice of the bell-buoy, and out 
beyond on the end of the point the lighthouse stood — a 
white sentinel against the darkening eastern sky. From 
beyond where the east beach curved from the point into 
the broad bay there came the boom and thud of the 
great waves as, unchecked in their course, they broke 
in full force upon the beach. 

“ Of all the great mysteries that scientists and philo- 
sophers have reasoned and moralized about, there is 
nothing greater, deeper or more wonderful than the 
mystery of our life itself. Our first coming to be 
ourselves; then the growth and development that is 
brought about by circumstances over which we seem to 
have so little control; and yet one needs only to be a 
student of life to feel assured that quite apart from any 
other reason than the mere things that have happened, 
the human history that has written its story upon the 
face of the world proves that there is a Power, supreme 
and divine, that orders all that goes to make life for 
each of us. Now and then the veil is drawn, as it is 
to-night, and in the happiness and beauty of life 
we feel and know that the power which holds and 
directs us in its wisdom is limitless and that it is 
Infinite Love.’’ 

Eleanor looked at the strong face beside her which 
was turned seaward and she said very softly, “That is 
the blessing of great sorrow : when we are stunned and 
frightened so that we can only endure, we are just 
forced to learn the lesson of trust. And then, like little 
children who have tried to be good and are rewarded 
with sweets, we are granted the blessed sweetness of 


“THE GULL^S NEST^» 


i6i 


peace. Life teaches us that its sorrows often bring with 
them great and blessed compensations.” 

The little white ponies went on through the golden 
light. Happiness and love crept up out of the opal sea 
and frolicked together in the path where two human 
lives were traveling. 

“ It’s just too perfectly beautiful for anything. We’ve 
got you for our very own for a whole week,” and little 
Katryn buried her radiant, sunburned face on Eleanor’s 
shoulder in an ecstasy of delight and Dorothy, jumping 
up and down, squealed with joy, “I’ve a pail and shovel 
all ready for you and we’ll have the beautifullest time 
on the sand to-morrow.” 

And so the week of joy began. In the freshness of the 
early morning Eleanor stood looking out over the blue 
water, across the downs where, on the hummocks and 
in the hollows the bayberry and sweet fern showed 
bronze leaves in the midst of their greenness and sent 
forth an aromatic fragrance to sweeten the breath of the 
morning; and against the gray rocks and along the 
hedge rows the wild roses showed where the pink 
blossoms had been in June — a crimson bit of color 
where the hips and haws hung out the autumn signal; 
and down below the greenness, the white stretch of 
sand reaching to where the blue waters as they broke 
upon the shore tossed up feathery foam wreaths. 

“What a child you are, Eleanor.” She felt Mrs. 
Barnard’s gentle arm about her waist. “ One would not 
fancy the weight of care these two years have brought, 
to see you standing there, so slight, so girlish. You 
keep your heart young and thus life can’t harden you. 


lO 


i 62 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


I love you for it, dear child. Life’s dower to you was a 
greatness and depth of heart that only makes sorrows 
and disappointments quicken into greater, deeper 
strength. But this is to be the happiest week of our 
summer. My brother has had no vacation : each time 
he has come to us, he has been called away after a few 
hours, but now he is to really stay for the week. Dr. 
Anderson and his mother have just come home; they 
have had two such happy months in England. They 
were here with us last week and Ned, dear boy, insisted 
upon taking my brother’s place for a week, especially 
the slum work which has been most arduous this sum- 
mer; and he is not to be called to town unless there is 
something very urgent, so we will all lay our cares aside 
and gather strength for whatever may be waiting.” 

Dorothy’s voice was impatient. “ Please come 
quickly: little Helen is on the sand already — ^Katryn is 
with her and I’ve come up for you. Please come.” 

And Eleanor went across the sweet, fragrant downs, 
her heart as light and happy as the little child’s beside 
her, and there on the beach, such a picture! A happy 
young mother sat upon the rocks; a rosy, healthy, 
sunburned baby, in a brief flannel bathing suit with 
bare arms and feet, was spattering the water that had 
filled a little hole made in the sand and as the drops 
flashed in the sunshine peals of merry laughter seemed 
to get mixed up with the spray; till the child threw 
herself down upon the sand and squealing in sheer joy, 
rolled over and over to the very water’s edge and then 
jumped up and ran away from the waves that were 
trying to catch her. 


THE GULL’S NEST 


163 


Eleanor took the baby in her arms and tried to con- 
vince herself it was the same little Helen Foster that 
had been carried away from the Refuge to die. There 
were the regular features, the great speaking eyes and 
the long lashes, — and that was all. The dimpled cheeks 
were round and rosy, there was a glow of health, a 
strength and vigor in every outline of the little active 
body; joy and love shone out of the child’s eyes. 

Such a frolic on the sand ! Eleanor was as merry as 
the children. She made sand castles just as gaily as 
they did and ran away from the waves; tossed pebbles 
out over the water and gathered wreaths of sea moss, 
that the mermaids had sent in on the waves for love 
: tokens; and laughed and sang as merrily as the three 
little friends, who clung to her in perfect happiness. 

! Then a tall figure came lankly over the downs, a lad 
' with rather a weak but kind face and little Helen ran 
to him and sprang into his arms and the young mother 
rose and greeted him and the three, a little, happy 
I family, after a bit, went off together into the morning 
j sunshine. 

j “ Uncle Hubert is going to take us for a walk out to 
I the Humane House as soon as he has helped Mama with 
I some accounts, he said. I shouldn’t think people would 
want to do accounts on their holiday; but I suppose 
when people are as old as Uncle Hubert they don’t 
really mind,” Katryn said. 

Dorothy said with a little gasp, Oh, please, I hope 
you won’t ever grow old like that.” 

Eleanor felt indignant and resentful. “Your uncle 
I is not old; I have no doubt he dislikes accounts heartily, 


164 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


but he likes better than anything else to help people, and 
if he can help your mother he’ll certainly be ready to do 
the accounts or anything else. But he is not old.” 

Both children looked at her seriously. “Are you 
sure?” Dorothy asked and Katryn added, “Nora says 
when he passes away the world will lose a good man.” 

Eleanor felt out of temper and impatient with the 
children. “Your uncle is not old, for when I was as 
big as Katryn he was a boy at boarding school and he 
used to come home and cut me out whistles. When 
I was about twelve years old he came home for the holi- 
days from college; I thought him very old then though 
now I know he was not twenty. He was very kind to 
me when I was frightened — ” 

But both children were looking at her with wide eyes 
of horror and Katryn gasped, “Twenty! — is he as old as 
that ? It doesn’t seem as if anybody could live as long 
as that. I’ve lived an awfully long time and I am only 
six. I didn’t suppose he was as old as that now! ” 
Eleanor laughed. “ When you are six, twenty seems 
old; but when you are twenty, little girl, you will know 
that you have only just been getting ready to live all the 
time you have been in the world.” 

Dorothy asked seriously, “But when people are twenty 
aren’t they very old, really ? ” 

Eleanor was sitting with an arm around each child. 
She looked down into their eager faces. “At twenty 
some of us are only children and some of us are care- 
worn and old. It isn’t always the years that make us 
old.” 

Katryn asked eagerly, “It’s the birthdays, isn’t it? 


“THE GULL’S NEST” 


165 

and the candles you have in the cake. With people, I 
suppose, it’s just like it is with clocks — ^some are fast and 
some are slow and some are just right.” 

Dorothy was off over the downs and calling back: 
“I see something — wait a minute.” She came care- 
fully and slowly back, carrying in her hand two full, 
fluffy dandelion clocks. “ Do fairy clocks tell true time ? ” 
she asked, looking at Eleanor. “ Nora says they aren’t 
any good.” She waited anxiously for the answer. 

“I expect Nora hasn’t had very much to do with 
fairies or she’d know everything that belongs to fancy 
has some use in the world. Fairy clocks do not tell the 
same time that the watch-maker’s clocks say, but that 
does not prove that they are of no use — only that we 
can’t understand what they tell us.” 

Eleanor smiled down into the children’s eager faces 
and Katryn, resting her head against her shoulder, 
began to blow and count. “One” — the air was filled 
with white fluff; “two” — another fluffy cloud; 
“three” — and all the down was gone. “My clock 
says three. What does yours say, Dorothy ? ” 

Dorothy’s bellows had smaller capacity: “One” — 
“two” — “three” — “four” — “five” — yet there was 
white down on the slender green stem. It was eight 
o’clock before the last bit of fuzz was gone. “Which 
clock is right?” the child asked. “Is it eight oris it 
three?” 

Eleanor looked from the children’s faces to the two 
slender green stems that told their fairy time; then she 
looked off to the shining sea — it was summer time there 
and summer time in her heart. “ When you grow older,” 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


1 66 

she said, “ and you learn lots and lots of wise things you 
will learn how it is with people: — though the summers 
and winters come and go, the clocks of some people’s 
lives show it is early, it is yet morning, and with others 
the wind blows steadily all the time and the clocks show 
that it has passed the weariness and the heat of the noon- 
day — the hours have been filled and the time has sped 
quickly — burdens and duties and work and perhaps sor- 
row and care have made the time go fast and the hour 
is late. You see, fairy clocks tell the time that it is in 
our lives and that is more important and interesting to 
all of us than just the time it is in the world.” 

“Yes, indeed! What time would it be with yours 
and my clock, I wonder?” There Dr. Wayne stood, 
close beside them, listening. 

“ Dear Uncle Hubert I Why didn’t you come before ? 
We’ve just been having the beautiful! est time. Are you 
ready for the walk now?” Katryn asked. 

“Ready, yes, and anxious.” 

Eleanor’s brown eyes were filled with the joy light of 
the old days. “To take a walk with you will seem like 
old times. I wonder why we always think old times so 
delightful? Do you know, I believe that there is al- 
ways something just beyond— it may be a little way or a 
very long way; but that there is something coming 
that is better than anything that has gone before, just 
the way it is in fairy tales.” 

Katryn looked up with wide eyes: “ Oh, do you really 
believe in fairy princes and are you looking for one al- 
ways? Dorothy and I are always ’specting a fairy 
godmother and are you looking for a prince?” 


“THE GULL^S NEST 


167 


A shadow passed over Eleanor’s face. 

It was Hubert Wayne who answered the child. 
“You mustn’t expect your fairy godmother to look the 
least bit like any one else’s fairy godmother. No two 
godmothers nor no two princes look exactly the same in 
fairy tales and remember, we never know just what’s 
coming — that’s how the magic works. If you gather 
enough hips and haws we’ll make a wreath to put about 
the lunch table and surprise mother. Don’t you want 
my hat for a basket?” 

In a moment they were off across the downs while 
Eleanor and Hubert Wayne walked along the silver 
sands and the sea broke with its ceaseless music at their 
feet. 

“ It isn’t one bit like the Humane House mother told 
us about,” Dorothy said with disappointment as she 
looked at the bare little weather-beaten building. “ It 
wasn’t worth all this long walk to see.” 

And Katryn echoed, “No, no, it wasn’t worth it. 
Do you think so. Uncle Hubert?” 

“It makes a difference, little woman, whether you are 
considering it with fairy princes on a glorious morning 
like this, or whether you should come to it worn and 
spent from an angry sea in the cold and dark of a fierce 
night, beaten upon the shore half-dead: — ^you would 
be glad of a friendly shelter and understand why it is 
called a Humane House. We measure the value of 
shelter by its need and the humanities of life by the cold 
and bitterness of the storms we have passed through.” 

“Oh, please. Uncle, don’t talk solemn to-day,” 
Katryn’s face was so full of anxious distress that 


i68 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


Eleanor laughed and Dorothy said, “Uncle Hubert, is 
it very old time with your clock? ” 

Dr. Wayne laughed. “Yes, Dorothy, I fancy it is 
old time with my clock; perhaps thaPs what’s the 
matter.” 

But Katryn interrupted. “Uncle Hubert’s only 
making a joke. He really isn’t old: you said he 
isn’t.” 

Eleanor looked down at the child’s face. “ Don’t you 
know, dear, I said we might be only a few years old and 
yet it might be very late in our lives: we might have 
lived through lots of things and be a great many years 
old and yet our clocks might tell an early time.” 

Dorothy answered, “But you did say Uncle Hubert 
was twenty, didn’t you? I think that’s an awful old 
age whatever his clock says.” 

Hubert Wayne looked amused. “ Did you say I was 
not old? You should not pervert the minds of my 
nieces with facts that cannot be proved. If you 
tell stories about me, you do not know what I may be 
tempted to do.” 

They were walking back across the downs. Eleanor 
was carrying the wreath of hips and haws wound about 
over her light morning dress. The children were gather- 
ing kelp and shells along the shore, sometimes only to 
throw them back into the sea to some little fancy mer- 
maid sister waiting in some blue-green cavern down 
under the waves; sometimes to carry them home. 
The golden-rod gleamed yellow like plumes waving in 
the greenness of the bayberry and sweet fern and here 
and there a crimson leaf showed where a dwarfed 


‘‘THE GULL’S NEST” 169 

sumach, beaten down by the winds, proclaimed that 
autumn was coming up over the sea. 

“One could walk forever,” Eleanor said, her eyes 
glowing with a joyous, happy light, as she turned to 
Hubert Wayne, who answered quietly, “That will be 
the wonder of the eternal — that the happiness and joy 
will never come to an end.” 

“Uncle Hubert, can’t we go into the Coast-guard 
Station ? Mother said when you came you would take 
us,” Katryn said. 

Dr. Wayne turned to Eleanor. 

“Indeed, I should enjoy it very much,” she said. 

“I am always in the mood,” he laughed. “I admire 
those big fellows — such latent power and energy in 
their great clumsy bodies. Sitting there on their 
lobster- pots in the sunshine this morning they look as if 
they hadn’t force enough to put off a small boat, but let 
the booming of a minute gun bring the cry of distress 
into their placid lives and you’ll find that their blue 
coats and brass buttons are not worn unworthily: — 
their courage is dauntless and they will fight when there 
is absolutely no hope, trying to snatch the prey from 
the sea.” 

They stood watching the little group of buildings while 
the children went on to greet the men. 

“Surely their courage is not quickened by their 
fancy,” Eleanor said. “ When the cry of distress comes 
they cannot tell who or what it is needs them.” 

“No, indeed,” the doctor replied, as they leaned upon 
the stone wall that marked the limit of the government 
land. “They don’t look as if they would weigh the 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


170 

possibilities or consider the probabilities. Just out 
there a great philosopher may be clinging to the spar, 
his knowledge balanced on a shingle between the sea 
caverns and the sky; or it may be an artist’s deft fingers 
holding on to the wreck and life with the same sort of 
desperate earnestness as the wretch who is less than a 
beast; or a bit of shingle may be keeping a surgeon’s 
life-sa\dng hands out of the unfathomable depths of the 
sea; yet I fancy no such thought as this disturbs the 
men as they sit over their cards and tobacco. It isn’t 
that makes their arms strong and their hands steady 
to fight old ocean and steal her prey. It is the spirit 
of their life that it is just for them to dare and do with- 
out measuring opportunity.” 

Eleanor looked up at the doctor. “Perhaps it is a 
more splendid courage, but do you not think it would 
make it easier when they are wet and cold and the fight 
is desperate and they cannot see hope at all, if they could 
fancy, if their imagination could be a stimulus ? They 
certainly are real heroes.” 

They both watched the red-brown house with its 
outlook on top and the half dozen blue- coated heroes 
sitting in the sun below and against the outer wall a 
motley array of quarter-boards. 

“Why do they decorate their houses with those old 
boards ? Are they vessels that they have relieved ? ” 
Eleanor asked. 

“Those are their door-plates,” he replied; “but they 
do not tell the men’s names. Our name is really, after 
all, much less important to all of us and is less part of 
ourselves than what we do, our work or what we are 


“THE GULL’S NEST” 


171 

doing with our lives. Very few of us could have such a 
door-plate bearing such a crest. Think what it really 
means — ‘The Maud Dudley,’ ‘The Romance,’ ‘The 
Laura,’ ‘The Maggie Abbot,’ ‘The Sea Witch’ — we can 
see five from here and that means five wild storms when 
Uncle Sam’s faithful servants forgot themselves, literally 
threw their lives into the sea to save other lives. ’Tis a 
sermon in paint and wood, that little red-brown house, 
set up there by the highway of the waters where the 
brothers of those who sail upon the great deep live, 
ready to help in the hour of need : here on this bit of a 
coast where the stern boulders, the wild tossed kelp and 
the roar and boom of the waves shows even in the sun- 
shine the sternness of life. The apparatus is wonderful. 
Let us go inside. You won’t mind the venerable fish 
odors.” 

They passed across the sand and the men came for- 
ward to greet the doctor, evidently an old friend. 

“I tell you what. Captain Jones, you keep your bit of 
land here so free from all nonsense that I should think 
the mermaidens would send their children up to play 
on the sand without the least fear of their becoming 
touched with human ways.” 

“Aye, aye, sir! That wall yonder, though it’s scarce 
breast high, keeps back the tide of the fashionables 
and holds this p’int of land, this bit of a few acres of 
sand, just for us simple folk with Uncle Sam as our 
guardeen. Them bitters you give me last year done me 
a sight of good; they took the stiffness from out my 
jints and put me right on my sea legs agin. ‘ Lady like 
to see the Savin’ Station— fetch her right alon’, sir; all 


172 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


the ladies in the country or anybody else as is your 
friend has always got a welcome here.” 

When Eleanor stood in her light traveling dress look- 
ing over the gray sea to where the gray sky line bent to 
meet it and together they seemed to wrap the world in 
a silver sheen and hush it into that twilight stillness 
peculiar to September, the week of golden days was 
behind her. Even its memory was vibrant with a live, 
thrilling joy: the drives through the quiet seaside 
villages, through the woods, ever finding the sea waiting 
like a glad surprise at the end of every green vista; 
the hours cruising about the coast in the pretty little 
yacht; a splendid ride over the water in a dory when the 
wind turned every wave into feathered foam; the long, 
quiet evenings when the moon made a silver path across 
the water and the twin lights on the Point winked at the 
stars; and through it all, ever the sunshine, Mrs. Bar- 
nard’s tender, loving friendship, the children’s fancies 
and frolics, making life merry and filling the golden 
hours with the music of their laughter; and Dr. Wayne 
— he had been to life just what the sea had been to the 
world, a surprise and delight, bringing unfailing joy 
and making the days a stretch of beauty. Now it was 
all over, in the past: in the future waited work and 
loneliness. “I am a coward and a pretty selfish one, 
too,” she said, as she looked through the grayness of 
the September day into life. 

Then the children’s merry voices rang across the 
downs. “We are to have you all to ourselves — ^just 
Dorothy and me. Professor Scott has come to see 
Mama and we can have our last nice, quiet time.” 


‘‘THE GULL’S NEST” 


173 


The two little figures in their blue reefers, serge caps 
mounted on 'their yellow hair, their eyes and cheeks 
glowing, certainly had nothing of the grayness of the 
morning about them, but stood out, a vivid, radiant, a 
joyous picture of child life. 

Dorothy was hugging one of Eleanor’s hands. 
“ Don’t let’s go for a walk; mother may be able to come 
soon and she will be so disappointed to find us far away. 
Let’s sit on the big rock and please tell us a story — it 
will be the last time, remember.” 

The sunshine of child life drove the gray mist out of 
Eleanor’s. 

“Yes, we will have one more nice story on the big 
rock,” and holding a chubby hand in each of hers she 
went upon the fragrant, pathless way across the downs. 

“Please tell us more about Margaret and the poor 
lonely father merman left with all his children down 
alone in the sea,” Katryn begged as she climbed upon 
the rock. 

Dorothy nestled very close. “Please begin it like 
a new story — ‘ once upon a time there was a little white 
walled town.’ ” 

“ Once upon a time,” Eleanor began, thinking of the 
other child on that other day by that same sea who had 
made the same request. Desires and wishes are much 
the same, only circumstances make the difference. At 
their feet against the kelp-covered rocks the waves 
lapped gently. Mother Nature was putting the world 
to sleep; a sweet stillness brooded over life while in 
fancy they three traversed the great sea caverns, stood 
by Margaret’s knee and watched her comb the little 


174 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


ones’ hair and started in dismay as down through the 
blue-green water fell the sound of the silver bell. Then 
with the poor merman they wandered through the 
desolate caverns, comforting the mourning children. 
So real was it that when the merman rose upon the waves 
Dorothy called with him, “ Margaret ! ” “ Margaret ! ” 

Then they climbed up the wet sands to the little gray 
church on the lonely hill : in fancy they pressed their 
faces against the small leaded panes: then, when the 
merman cried, “Come away! Call no more: she will 
not come though you call all day! Come away!” 
Dorothy burst into tears. 

“It was a day like this; I know it was and they felt 
just the way we will after you have gone. I am so 
sorry for them ; I know how it feels. We’ll want and 
want you and you won’t be here, and oh, the days will 
be forever long.” 

There came a time, when Eleanor remembering that, 
knew that the desolation of one day could seem like 
an eternity. Now she was wiping the tears from the 
blue eyes. “ You wouldn’t want Margaret to have gone 
back, would you, dear ? for then she could not have had 
a soul. It was better for her to stay in the little gray 
church on the hill and to have kept her soul. I wish 
we could see some of the children this morning dancing 
on the kelp and combing their hair. I must say good- 
bye to the old wreck.” 

They went across the green to the stretch of shining 
sand where the old hulk showed dark against the gray- 
ness of the sea. Long ago a great beam had come 
through the broken side and now was covered with the 


“THE GULL^S NEST’^ 


175 


sea moss stretched out upon the sand; there was 
Hubert Wayne. It was the first time Eleanor had ever 
seen him taking life passively. She remembered the 
day in the rose garden, in the mountains, as she noticed 
his face gray and drawn. He had come away to be 
alone with his sorrow. At the sight of the children the 
look of pain passed quickly and with an effort she could 
well understand he roused himself and came to meet 
them, his wonderful smile more tender than she had 
ever known it. 

“ We came to say good-bye to the old wreck; it seems 
to belong to the magic of the place,” she said. “ What a 
wonderful golden week this has been and now that it 
is at an end the same sky has turned as sad a face to 
life as my own heart has, if one could only see it.” 

They all sat down on the old beam, but in a moment 
the children slipped away to gather sea beans that they 
might squeeze them to hear them pop. 

“You are going to stay here a little longer, are you 
not?” Eleanor asked, trying to find something to say 
that would let him know she remembered his sorrow 
with loving sympathy. 

“I go to my work to-morrow. Are you quite sure, 
Eleanor, that you want to go back to the North Woods 
for two months? Do you really like the work? Are 
you satisfied, contented and happy?” 

Eleanor’s face was turned toward the sea as she 
answered: “Indeed it is a real pleasure to carry out 
Miss Aurelia’s plans. The work is original; one can 
see its results from day to day. I ought to be satisfied; 
I hope I am learning to be contented ; as for happiness, 


176 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


how little do any of us know about that — ^some of us 
must learn to gather up the crumbs that others cast 
away to satisfy our hunger. I am like this old vessel, 
tossed out of the sea of life, shattered and alone; 
I do not think I ever knew any one more detached from 
everything that might be a claim or belong to them. 
The only one that really belongs to me in the world is 
my mother. I do not like to even speak of her to any 
one but you. Do you really think she has forgotten 
me?” 

“No, Eleanor, that could not be. I have sent her 
tidings of you every fortnight since she sailed.” 

“ And she ? ” Eleanor asked, her color coming quickly. 
“ What does she wrfte to you ? Would it be wrong for 
you to let me see just one of her letters ? A question 
about me in her own handwriting would seem almost 
like her voice. Every day I have watched for a letter : 
I cannot give it up though I ought to know now, I must 
go through my whole life alone.” 

He turned quickly to her, his eyes full of something 
she could not understand but that spoke to her very 
soul; the color rushed into her cheeks and her eyes 
answered his. 

“Do look. Uncle Hubert, and see if this is the soft 
shell crab you sang to us about the other night.” The 
child brought a little squirming sea-beast and laid it 
down in their very life’s pathway. 

The shriek of a whistle as if the engine protested 
against the fate which made it the cause of so many 
sad partings, the noise, the crowd, the bustle, Mrs. 
Barnard’s loving, tender farewell and the last golden 


THE GULL^S NEST 


177 


minutes were at an end. The children’s last em- 
phatic hugs were over: how stuffy and hot the car 
was. 

Hubert Wayne opened the window. “ This is on the 
waterside; you will have a breeze.” Then as he laid 
on the seat a bunch of young sprays of sweet fern and 
bayberry and a few bright hips and haws, he added, 
‘‘ This is just to keep the fragrance of the downs with you 
all the way.” He held his hand out. “Mr. Schuyler 
has answered my letters, Eleanor; but if ever I have a 
line from your mother I will send it at once to you. 
There never can be anything too much for you to ask of 
me; I want you to know that and to believe it. Blood 
is not really thicker than water; there are ties stronger 
— stronger than those of blood.” 

“ All-aboard ! ” “Sea Beach next station.” The 
train was moving: he was looking down into her eyes. 
“You are not, nor ever can be, alone in the true sense 
of the word.” Though she looked straight at him not a 
word came. “ Good-bye, Eleanor. I am always ready, 
waiting.” Only her eyes replied. 

Then he was gone back to the sea while Eleanor went 
through the grayness of that September day with the 
sweet fragrance of the downs, back to the North Woods 
to her work, with a great joy and sense of completeness 
which she felt must be the afterglow of the happiness, 
the friendship and the love of that week. 

The North Woods hung out glorious banners of 
crimson and gold on every bush and bough. Purple 
asters came first in little bits, then in great stretches, then 
at last showed only in splashes here and there as it were 


12 


178 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


nature’s mourning for the death of the summer. The 
birds flew high with a farewell song, flew away into the 
southern sky; the flowers too had gone; but the river 
sang on and on through the frosty nights and clear, 
radiant days; the great trees, little by little, shook off 
their gay and brown leaves and reached naked arms 
over ‘ The Lodge,’ while inside the logs crackled merrily 
on the big fire-dogs. An odd family of frail, sickly 
specimens of humanity listened to the river, drank in 
the sunshine and took a fresh hold of life, gained new 
vigor and, after a bit, found color and strength. 

Miss Aurelia did not come. An old friend of her be- 
loved Ardelia’s was slowly dying in a castle on one of 
the Scottish Lakes and Miss Aurelia was waiting 
for the end. 

David Pendergast had written her several unique and 
characteristic letters assuring her all was well at ‘ The 
Lodge’ and she need never have a worry. — “Miss 
Gray’s got the same kind of a heart as youm. She 
ain’t got so many schemes in her head, so she steers the 
one she’s got right straight along. You don’t need to 
have a bit of consarn. Jest come hum when you get 
ready.” 

And so Eleanor did her work and grew strong there in 
the North Woods — there where the Hudson is young 
and the wild winds frolic about the great mountain 
peaks and through the valleys and the world makes 
each day, vigor, strength and power. 

“Who are thy playmates, boy?” 

‘My favorite is Joy, 

Who brings with him his sister. Peace, to stay 


THE GULL’S NEST 


179 


The livelong day. 

I love them both; but he 
Is most to me.’ 

“And where thy playmates now 
O man of sober brow?” 

‘Alas! dear Joy, the merriest, is dead 
But I have wed 
Peace; and our babe, a boy. 
New-born, is Joy.” 


John B. Tabs. 


CHAPTER XVI 


NEW YORK — ^THE CITY ORPHAN HOUSE 

The wind swept the snow in a wild hurricane about 
‘The Lodge’ as it nestled in a hollow on the mountain 
side. The trees with their naked branches seemed 
literally wringing their hands in despair. Winter had 
hushed the voice of summer, the chatter of birds, the 
humming of insects and the continual murmur of the 
river, and it spoke in a voice strong and deep, calling 
through the hills the message of death and silence in the 
wonder of the storm through the old mountain forests. 

Eleanor looked first at the great logs burning on the 
hearth, then about the cheerful homelike room. All the 
guests were gone and she was to leave to-morrow. 
Miss Aurelia had probably landed yesterday and would 
be waiting for her at the house in Washington Square 
where, together, they were to spend a few days going 
over the summer work and, as Miss Aurelia wrote, “ set- 
tling other matters also.” 

How quickly the months had gone and how much 
they had brought of strange, valuable experience, of 
health and vigor. To-morrow night she would be back 
in the old life: it would be so nice to see Mrs. Barnard 
and the children. Miss Aurelia and — ^Dr. Wayne, for 
he would be sure to come to-morrow. Eleanor turned 
the leaves of her portfolio and a soft fragrance of bay- 
180 


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i8i 


berry and sweet fern stole out into the firelight. She 
took a spray of the crispy dry green leaves and as she 
held it a thrill of the joy of that golden week by the sea 
swept over her, its beauty, its wonder. The storm 
outside, the firelight inside, even ‘The Lodge’ itself 
melted away and disappeared and memory brought the 
sea, the kelp-covered rocks, the hulk of the old vessel 
and Hubert Wayne. 

“Well, Miss Gray, this is a real breath of North 
Country breeze, ain’t it? Doesn’t luk much as if ye 
were goin’ to git out to-morrer and I reackon Sally nor 
me won’t go into mournin’ if ye do have to stop a spell 
longer. Got some letters fur ye and one’s from Miss 
Livingston though she ain’t on this shore, fur the trade- 
mark is furrin and there’s a blue-green stamp that don’t 
belong to Uncle Sam and I’m jest a mite pleased, fur 
there ain’t nothin’ mean-spirited in stayin’ on the shore 
when the blast’s blowin’ like this as long as the Lord 
made us without v^ings or fins.” 

David, with his great fur coat all snow-flecked, looked 
much like Father Christmas. With his coming the sea 
was swept away and all the bright memories. From 
the kitchen region came Sally, wiping her arms, anxious 
to hear the news in Miss Livingston’s letter which was 
quite as much to the point as if the little old lady was 
speaking: she would not be able to sail for a fortnight; 
having no business of her ovm, other people’s business 
was hers and that was keeping her now; she did not 
suppose it would make any particular difference to any 
one which side of the Atlantic she spent the next two 
weeks; something might yet keep her longer, one never 


i 82 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


could tell and there was no sense in making cast iron 
plans; she was anxious to hear about the summer more 
in detail than the letters had told her, but she found 
nothing in the Prayer Book or Bible to indicate that 
her desire measured her duty; she sent messages to 
David and Sally, her love to Eleanor. 

The great logs crackled on the hearth; the Pender- 
gasts had gone to remote regions to their work; Eleanor 
faced the future. She could not go to Washington 
Square as long as Miss Aurelia was not to be there. 
Where should she go? Not to Mrs. Barnard’s: her 
letter of two days before had come from Lakewood, 
where she and the children were spending a week with 
Mrs. Anderson. Oh, the comfort, the joy, the wealth of 
having a home, a place where one had a right! No 
wonder she could feel and sympathize with the other little 
homeless creatures — ^her brothers and sisters. To work 
for them, to live for them was all that was left to her. 
What could she do? Where find a place to work? 
She turned to the other letters yet unopened — a re- 
ceipted bill, several advertisements, and a tinted en- 
velope with a gold monogram. She opened it and read : 


“Dear Eleanor: 

“ Have just returned from the other side. We dined with your 
mother at her villa in Sorrento. Went to see you to-day. Was sur- 
prised not to find you at the Refuge. Don’t you want to come and 
take charge of the nursery in The City Orphan House? Great 
opportunity for work. The Board has been unfortunate in finding 
anyone to fill the position. You will have no time to think: I sup- 
pose that is the greatest inducement I can offer. Ned Anderson 
gave me your address. When I told him why I wanted it he flew 
into a perfect rage, was really rude; if he did not belong to such a 


NEW YORK 


183 

good family one would say he was no gentleman; but he was a 
friend of Gerald’s and I suppose he can’t understand as I do. If 
you want to come just telegraph when to expect you. As long as 
you will be kept busy have no time to think, other details about the 
position don’t matter. 

“ Most affectionately, in great haste, 

Emma Chester.” 

At least it was a place, a corner when no other offered; 
there was no choice. David sent the telegram, and late 
the next afternoon Eleanor found herself climbing 
the broad stone steps of a brown angular building while 
the winter blast came drearily from the river, driving 
before it the snowflakes. 

‘‘Come right into the settin’-room.” 

Eleanor followed the blue- checked orphan into a room 
so stiff, so painfully ugly, that no one could ever have 
sat there save under compulsion. From the walls 
looked down the faces of dead patrons: they stared 
at her with pride and arrogance. She turned to the 
window from which she could see the storm-bound 
river and she said to herself, “ If pride was my besetting 
sin, life is teaching me humility and surely I must have 
lost all the spirit I ever had to be here in quest of a 
position as Mrs. Chester’s protegee. WTiat will come 
next? Happy storm-beaten river to be able to escape 
and run away from the bitterness of the pitiless blast to 
the sea, the dear sea.” A dark irregular line marked 
where the further shore lay against the leaden sky with 
its low-lying clouds, beneath which the snow beat wildly 
and w^eirdly about. 

The voices that came down the dark length of the 
corridor were sharp and rasping, attuned with the harsh 


184 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


voice of the wind outside as they repeated with nasal in- 
tonation : 

“It was the schooner Hesperus 
That sailed the wintry sea.” 

‘‘This is the teacher for the nursery, that IVlrs. 
Chester telephoned about this morning — ^yes. You 
are very fortunate — ^yes, come right up and I will show 
you the dear little children — yes.” Miss Reardon had 
a gutta-percha face with an attached smile which she 
generally wore. “I do hope I will succeed. I really 
know nothing about what I am expected to do,” 
Eleanor said, as they passed through the hall while she 
resisted a great longing to run away from the place; 
the atmosphere oppressed her. 

They were mounting the stairs as Miss Reardon said, 
“You are to have the children all to yourself, nobody to 
interfere — ^yes, nobody to interfere. They are an in- 
teresting age; just beginning life as it were — yes, each 
an unwritten book waiting for your hand to write the 
word of life. You are taking a great responsibility — 
yes, a very great one: sixteen little souls beginning their 
human pilgrimage — eighteen months the youngest and 
the oldest boy four and a half years — ^yes, all beginning 
life. Mrs. Chester says you are a person of ideals and 
that you are a Christian — ^yes, — a believer.” 

Eleanor unconsciously stiffened. “I hope I will 
prove competent for the work. Am I to begin to-night ? ” 

Miss Reardon threw open a door. “Here is your 
domain: this is the nursery.” 

A large square room stretched coldly out before them: 
in the centre a table and by it a large, comfortable rock- 


NEW YORK 


185 


ing-chair; across the wall at one end a broad shelf 
laden with boxes of blocks, dolls, woolly lambs, tea sets, 
jumping jacks, tops and balls, even a rocking horse — 
which time taught Eleanor should not be touched by the 
children lest one of them be broken; beneath the shelf 
a row of tiny wooden chairs; the rest of the room was 
bare; the gray dreariness of the storm could be seen 
from two large windows through the black bars of a 
fire-escape; dotted about the floor sixteen blue-checked 
gingham aprons above which looked out on the world 
the same number of round, neatly shaved heads. 

“We have made five changes in two months,” Miss 
Reardon was saying, “ and it is all for the lack of system 
— ^yes, — lack of system. Everything is absolutely in 
your hands — ^yes, — absolutely: one of the children 
from a higher grade will be sent to assist you in your 
duties — at present it is little Alta Noll, a real sweet 
child of nearly ten — ^you will find her invaluable — 
yes, — invaluable. Here is Mattie — ^yes, — Mattie knows 
it all and she 'will show you everything.” 

Toward them came a little hump-backed, crooked 
creature, wonderful in a plaid go'wn of such dimensions 
that her back was not large enough to accommodate the 
whole design; the cheek-bones were high and the eye- 
brows turned up; and on top of her head was a bow of 
scarlet ribbon pulled high on either side. She was say- 
ing with a broad self-satisfied smile, “ How-de-do, Miss 
Gray. I am pleased to make your acquaintance. 
Shall I take you to your room ? It opens right off from 
the night nursery, making it real handy to look after the 
children at night.” 


i86 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


Eleanor followed and as her guide ushered her in she 
said with kindly condescension, “You’re awfully lucky, 
Miss Gray, to git in such a nice place.” 

When Eleanor returned to the day nursery she found 
Mattie waiting to receive her: as hostess or reception 
committee, or whatever she might be, she surely could 
not be surpassed. “Come children, now this is your 
new teacher — ” but the children never moved, only 
looked stolidly across the room; but when she added, 
clapping her hands together, “ On line! On line! ” im- 
mediately they began to gravitate toward one another. 
An elfish little fellow of about four years stood holding 
to the table leg; the next in size stood behind him hold- 
ing on to the blue pinafore before him, and so on until 
the whole sixteen made a long blue gingham line across 
the floor : at the very end a tiny tot not yet able to walk 
pulled herself up by the blue-checked apron before her. 
Mattie, pointing to the child, remarked, “She’s only 
been here a month : when she first came she could walk 
real smart but she’s so skeered at every least thing that 
she’s left off even standing alone, but I guess you’ll soon 
learn her.” 

There they stood, long noses and snub, blue eyes and 
brown, fair hair and dark — quite different in form and 
features, made, created to be so, yet so alike that they 
might well have been peas in a pod with an awful same- 
ness : did the little shaved heads or the similarity in the 
frocks cause it, or was it more the lack of something in- 
definable? Eleanor, remembering what Philomena 
had said about the possibility of making home where 
there was water and sky, wondered if she could make 


NEW YORK 


187 


anything that bore a semblance of home; wondered if 
it would be as easy to bring the spirit into this place as 
it had been to find the star shining in her night. 

“We will all have nice times together, won’t we? 
She smiled down at the long line. 

IVIattie’s shrill voice in an audible whisper command- 
ed, “Yes, ma’am.” Only a few voices responded: 
they piped up in a shrill, dreary, little shriek, “Yes, 
ma’am.” 

Then Mattie took the floor. “ If you’ll just come into 
the washroom I’ll show you how we fix them up for 
supper. The Board is awful perticlar that the nursery 
children should have everything done genteel. Here’s 
Altie: she’s just in time.” 

A gingham apron worn by a square child vdth short, 
straight hair and expressionless black eyes came into 
the room. ‘‘Say, Altie, this is Miss Gray; she’s the 
new teacher.” 

Altie stood on one foot and surveyed the new-comer: 
then she said slowly, “You ain’t the kind to stay; you 
show it all over.” 

Eleanor went to the child and took her red, chapped 
hands. “You are going to be my little helper: we two 
have to mother all these babies and this is to be our little 
home — I hope we can make it a happy one.” 

The child made no reply but, as the black eyes 
steadily watched her, Eleanor saw, as it were, the dawn- 
ing of a new light. 

The way in which Mattie and Alta, armed each with a 
wash-cloth, attacked the little faces would have been 
worthy the storming of a city; and if shining noses and 


i88 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


a general red polished complexion was the standard of 
gentility, the Board surely could have found no cause of 
complaint when the line issued from the wash-room. 

Then came one of the day’s diversions — the trans- 
porting of the long line down the stairway to the dining 
room where buns and milk were plentifully served. 
Once more back in the nursery the line was about to 
break, but Mattie gave the word of command : “ On line ! 
Say your prayers!” Immediately sixteen little red 
hands caught hold of as many little noses and those who 
were old enough to be accomplished in the art of lan- 
guage began in a shrill high-pitched key, “ Our Fa-ther 
who ar-t in Heavin.” The old prayer that came down 
from the mountain to meet the needs of the world and to 
bind together the big human family in its great heart- 
cry to its All-Father fell discordantly upon the twilight — 
meaningless and sadly broken : then with a sudden jerk 
of satisfaction as at a difficult matter accomplished came 
the end — ^“A-men!” “Unbutton!” and each pair of 
little hands began immediate work on the back before 
them. The ludicrous quite overcame the pathetic. 
With Mattie still as commander-in-chief the line passed 
into the night nursery, where a dim light showed the 
sixteen low beds. On the floor at the foot of each a 
child sank in a heap. Alta on one side and Mattie on 
the other went to work. Sixteen pairs of little shoes 
came off; down the line again and sixteen pairs of 
stockings hung across as many foot boards, down the 
line again and sixteen blue pinafores hung beside the 
stockings; again and again, up and down the line until 
sixteen little unbleached night dresses were buttoned 


NEW YORK 189 

about sixteen little throats. Thirty seconds more the 
beds were occupied and the lights out. 

Eleanor sat by the window in her room: she felt the 
force, the pressure of a big machine; it would make the 
grind of the work go forward with steady, even motion. 
Should she fall into the monotonous tread and be carried 
on ? It would save so much heart ache. She thought of 
the children at the Refuge; she had grown fond of them 
only to see them pass on. Little Dolores, how she had 
crept into her heart; then she had been snatched away 
and she was not likely ever to see her again. It would 
be easy now not to let these children creep into her life; 
but in the summer work in the North she had learned 
how it was possible for stunted, dwarfed humanity to 
blossom. What would Hubert Wayne say? With the 
thought of him, she knew in a moment — she could only 
give her best to life, whatever the cost. The wind rattled 
her window casement; but the storm was over and far 
above a star was shining, its spark reflected in the dark 
water below. 

The days wore on in a steady, dreary round. Eleanor 
was feeling the strain of actual hard labor, more than 
the children were showing any effect of her effort: yet 
they were growing more human, more normal — ^it was 
creeping into their play; there was less of the young 
pugilist. If there were fewer balls on the shelf there 
were more ideas in the little round heads. A woolly 
lamb had met destruction, but with his death the stolidity 
and torpor of two little lives had died also and a new 
power of feeling had awakened. 

Little Mike, returning from the room below where 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


190 

guests were received on visiting day, volunteered the in- 
formation, “Teacher, I’ve had a company and Katie, 
she’s got a company now; hers give her chocolate, hers 
is named Mrs. Jones; mine brung me some gum and 
her’s named Mrs. Mama.” 

Eleanor looked down to the sticky little face. “Was 
it your mother, Mikey, and was she very glad to see her 
little boy?” 

The child looked vacantly at her. “ What’s mother ? ” 
he asked. 

Eleanor drew him to her. “ Mother is the best thing 
a little boy can have. Haven’t you a mother, Mikey?” 
But the child only looked dull. “Have you a mother, 
Sarah, or Rosie or Annie?” Rosie seemed to have 
an idea. 

“ Miss Kelly what looks after the company, says she 
to me, ‘Aren’t you glad to see your mother?’ Was my 
company one. Teacher?” 

Miss Reardon had just come in: Eleanor turned to 
her in appeal. 

“Those children are not yet five years old. Miss Gray: 
it is unreasonable to expect them to understand abstract 
words — ^yes — absurd. All children of their age only 
comprehend the things their senses have been brought 
in contact with — ^yes — ^unquestionably this is so. You 
see in this way these little things are relieved of many 
worries and longings — ^yes — things that they have never 
known. This makes it very nice — yes — very.” 

The winter blast shook the thin wall that kept the 
outside air from the iron stairway up which Eleanor 
had just brought her sixteen charges from their early 


NEW YORK 


191 


breakfast. It was seven o’clock: already, before the 
day had really begun, she was tired. The children were 
cold and cross; such a bad beginning — ^how would it 
end ? She had been nearly three weeks in the Orphan 
House and had lost much of the bloom of the North 
Woods. Even the enthusiasm was being stifled by the 
pressure of work; yet she pressed on wearily; and here 
was another day. Through the weary round of morn- 
ing duties she tried with desperate earnestness to keep 
her courage and her hope. It was half past eleven 
when she sank into the great nursery chair for ten min- 
utes rest before the blue line must again be transported 
to the lower regions. 

Alta’s black eyes were watching her. “You’re all 
tuckered out. Teacher; there ain’t no end to the work, 
night nor day. If you’d only get cross and holler, it 
would keep your spirit up and the spunk would help 
you lots.” 

Eleanor smiled at the child. “No, Alta, you are 
mistaken; I’d use up all that extra force for nothing and 
you’d all want to get out of the way — ^just the way poor 
little Ethel likes to sit behind that table leg. Poor 
Baby! Is that your fortress of defence? Come here, 
dear; sit in my lap: eighteen months of life claims the 
privilege of a little petting.” 

The child did not move. Eleanor stooped, lifted her 
from beneath the table and with her in her lap sat down 
in the big rocking-chair. Wild screams of terror rent 
the air and the child stiffened herself like a wooden doll 
— ^no caress, no assurance had the least effect. 

“Have I hurt you, baby, — what is it?” 


192 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


Mike was looking on with a comprehensive grin, 
“Her^s scared, Teacher; her thinks her’s going to get 
licked cause her’s tooked up.” 

Eleanor put the child gently down on the floor and 
with little gasping sobs she crept quickly back to her one 
defense beneath the table. Eleanor looked pitifully 
at her, then at Mike, shrewd and wise in the wisdom of 
the world; at the children about her on the floor, and 
then at the door which, opening, showed Miss Aurelia, 
her black eyes snapping, her little shriveled face beam- 
ing. 

“Altogether all that could be desired, no doubt,” she 
snapped sarcastically as she came into the room, follow- 
ed by smiling Miss Reardon and a tall figure. 

“ Dr. von Boelte, may I have the pleasure of present- 
ing to you my self-willed young friend, Eleanor Gray ? ” 

Dr. von Boelte bowed. “ I am much honored. Miss 
Gray. Ze introduction would be odd did it come from 
any ozzer but ze friend we both imderstand who is in 
much distress at not finding ze young lady in Washing- 
ton Square to give her ze welcome when she comes from 
ze ship.” 

Eleanor went forward. Dr. von Boelte shook her 
hand warmly in his courtly way but Miss Livingston 
stood stiff and rigid. 

“How long have you been here?” she snapped. “I 
should have supposed there would be an education in 
the summer work that would have made such a thing as 
this impossible.” Then she turned quickly. “Miss 
Reardon, we will not trespass on your time: my friend, 
the Herr Doctor, will see the case in the Infirmary and 


NEW YORK 


193 


I will see Miss Gray here — then we will come to the 
Office to say good-bye to you; we will not keep you 
another minute, my good woman.” 

Miss Reardon, still smiling and ejaculating “Yes,” 
retired. 

“You are safely back, dear Miss Aurelia: I am so 
glad. How all your people did miss you this summer.” 
Eleanor smiled into the little, old wrinkled face, but Miss 
Aurelia only snapped, “ I do not happen to be the sub- 
ject of conversation this morning. What under 
heaven are you doing here, Eleanor Gray ? I draw the 
line at shaved, blue-checked orphans.” 

“Oh, don’t. Miss Aurelia! Poor babies! They can- 
not help it : they didn’t choose to be little brothers and 
sisters in misery any more than I did,” Eleanor whis- 
pered as she put her arms around Miss Aurelia and 
kissed her. 

“Eleanor Gray, you are a fool.” 

Dr. von Boelte interrupted. “Listen, Miss Gray. 
It is right what Miss Livingston will say. In mine 
country we do not take ze razor to cut ze grinestone: 
it will not pay — ^ze razor will break. Miss Livingston 
is right. Ze work here is not for ze young lady like 
you — fair and frail: it is for ze strong woman. She 
has ze better plan — ^you must leave ze babies and help 
her with ze greater work.” 

“Eleanor Gray, you certainly don’t deserve the 
friends you have: such a one as Hubert Wayne, and yet 
he sticks to you when you treat him the way you do — ^I 
should think you would be ashamed. He promised to 
look after you; but even the archangel couldn’t if you 


194 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


went off without telling him where you were going. 
Who would ever expect to find you in such a hole — 
you ought to be under lock and key.” 

“ Dear Miss Aurelia, one cannot bother one’s friends 
whenever one gets into trouble, especially if it is as 
often as I do. Every day I have hoped to go to Mrs. 
Barnard’s but I have not had a minute to myself.” 

Miss Aurelia put her hands on Eleanor’s shoulders 
and looked up into her face. “ Don’t look at me with 
your father’s eyes, child. Say good-bye to these babies 
and come. Hubert Wayne met me at the pier with 
this crazy news. I telephoned Mrs. Chester my exact 
opinion of her and told her you would leave first thing 
this morning.” 

There was a little cry. Alta’s black eyes were fierce. 

Teacher, don’t let ’em call you names. I’ll set up all 
night to do the work so you won’t get tuckered out no 
more. Only stay! Don’t go away! Me and the 
kids is just gettin’ a hold on things. Don’t let ’em take 
you away.” 

The tears were rolling down Eleanor’s cheeks. Miss 
Aurelia was using her handkerchief. Though she 
tried to snap, her voice was very tender; “Poor little 
lass! If you are such a fool about yourself, like your 
father you take hold of hearts: you give love and of it 
you will never be bereft.” 

“ Oh, brother man, fold to thy heart thy brother. 

Where pity dwells, the peace of God is there; 

To worship rightly is to love each other. 

Each smile a hymn, each kindly deed a prayer.” 

Whittier. 


CHAPTER XVII 


BLACKWELL’S ISLAND— LIFE’S TRAGEDY 

Such a looking envelope:— it’s another of those 
miserable letters from that square, snapping, blue-and- 
white check orphan,” and Miss Aurelia handed Eleanor 
across the lunch-table a small pink envelope, diagonally 
lined and addressed in red ink. 

An old lady raised her lorgnette. “Really, Miss 
Gray, is it true ? Miss Livingston declares you have an 
affinity for all inhabitants of institutions.” 

Hubert Wayne flashed a smile down the table. 
“Change the word affinity for sympathy. Miss Brown, 
and you’ll have it exactly.” 

Ned Anderson turned to Miss Aurelia. “Surely you 
are the last person, dear Miss Livingston, to make 
such a remark: I am afraid it’s a case of pots and 
kettles calling each other black.” 

Mr. Noble was sitting at Miss Aurelia’s left. “ With- 
out such pots and kettles I am certain the milk of human 
kindness would not be held in this big world of suffering 
and sin. Surely the old incurables in The City Home 
Pavilion would live more starved lives than they do 
without such blessed vessels. Yesterday, old Cooper 
hobbled down through the snow to make certain that 
Miss Livingston had returned and the New Year’s buns 
and coffee for to-morrow were assured.” 


195 


196 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


Miss Aurelia nodded — “Poor old Cooper! I hope 
you told him they’d be there.” 

Dr. Wayne laid his hand on Miss Aurelia’s: “Dear 
friend, you will be reasonable,” he urged, “you can’t 
cross the East River in such weather as this for a few 
old men.” 

Miss Aurelia snapped back: “Don’t you try to 
teach your elders, Hubert Wayne — learn your cate- 
chism. As a matter of fact, there are fifty-two men 
and fifty-two women: I’m not going to have them 
disappointed.” 

“And I am not going to have you commit suicide,” 
Hubert Wayne replied. “ It is rash foolishness for you 
to attempt such a thing: do be reasonable for once. 
Every one at the table will agree with me.” 

“I didn’t ask any one at the table,” Miss Aurelia 
snapped. “ I asked you all here to-day to lunch for my 
New Year’s treat; not to be preached to or nagged at, so 
there’s an end of it. I never said I was going and never 
meant to. If I don’t give Eleanor something to do she 
won’t stay with me: — every day she makes a row. 
Looking after belated Christmas trees and carrying 
flowers to the hospitals, she insists, is not work but 
pleasure. Eleanor, how would a trip to Blackwell’s 
Island please you ? Mr. Noble will let you go with him 
and look after you.” 

The clergyman smiled. “Indeed it will be a great 
pleasure. Miss Gray. I go by the uptown boat that is 
manned by the workhouse men; they are all old tars, 
most interesting fellows; many of them have lost one 
leg; all of them have a history. Will you come ? ” 


BLACKWELL’S ISLAND 


197 


“ Of course I will,” Eleanor replied ; “ and do my very 
best to take Miss Aurelia’s place.” 

But Ned Anderson interrupted, “O Miss Living- 
ston, you shouldn’t pay the least attention to what 
Eleanor says: she doesn’t know what is good for her- 
self. Please do not let her do any more hard things than 
you can help.” 

Miss Aurelia’s black eyes snapped. “ Please remem- 
ber, Ned Anderson, I’m old enough to be your grand- 
mother and have more experience and common sense 
than you’ll acquire if you should have the misfortune to 
live to be a thousand years old. This is a New Year’s 
lunch ; let us have peace. If Eleanor Gray dies before 
the year is out it will be from natural causes, not mur- 
der.” 

The Rev. George William Noble had crossed so 
many times in the burning heat and the fierce and 
bitter storm of winter that river which divides the vale 
of misery, one of the saddest, most hope-bereft spots on 
earth, from one of the busiest, most ambitious, most 
pleasure-satisfied cities in the world, that without even 
a moment’s consideration of the thermometer which 
had dropped to zero, or the fierce northeast wind that 
was sweeping across the country at the rate of fifty 
miles an hour, he stood at the little rude stairway from 
the foot of which the uptown boat carried a few select 
passengers to the Island every hour : but he did turn in 
surprise when Eleanor Gray stepped out of Miss 
Livingston’s carriage and his greeting was warm and 
cordial. 

“I never dreamed, Miss Gray, you would attempt to 


198 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


cross on such a day or I would have telephoned you we 
would take the lower boat. You are not accustomed to 
such severe exposure.” 

Eleanor followed him down the steps. “Indeed, 
Mr. Noble, I have endured many a fierce blast: I am 
not afraid of the open boat. The more bitter the day, 
the more welcome will be the buns and coffee. I have 
noticed storm and other things often prevent the work of 
relieving suffering, but the suffering itself goes on what- 
ever the weather or the circumstances.” 

The boat crossing the river was making little head- 
way though eight rowers were pulling with the strength 
and skill of old tars. The river was full of floating ice 
and the wind had turned it into a turbulent torrent. It 
was a difficult matter taking on board the two passen- 
gers, but more difficult still the voyage. Again and 
again the oars were scraped : again and again they came 
out of the water heavily coated with ice. The man at 
the prow, with a long spike, tried to force a way through 
the floating cakes which rattled against the sides of the 
boat and interrupted the oars: with a bump and a thud 
the prow struck and buried itself in a solid mass of ice. 

“All heave! Back row!” the captain cried. “Heave 
her off, Townsend!” The man at the prow balancing 
himself on his one leg buried his spike in the great 
floating mass that was fast carrying them with it down 
the river; the eight oars with one united effort plowed 
through the angry waters and the jagged, dirty ice 
cakes: with a groan they separated and the boat was 
free once more. Making their way with greater caution 
they moved slowly forward. 


BLACKWELL’S ISLAND 


199 


“Hi! Cap’n, we can’t make the boat-house: the ice 
has closed in solid,” Townsend called back, wiping the 
frost rime from his face. 

The old sailors enjoyed the flavor of excitement, of 
risk : it was a bit like their life on the high seas. They 
found the monotony of the river life tame and weari- 
some: every man among them had ten times the ex- 
perience of the captain, who was virtually their keeper — 
they were ready with advice and counsel and all kinds of 
suggestions. 

Mr. Noble turned to Eleanor. “I really ought not 
to have let you run this risk. One does not like to 
suggest amendment to Miss Aurelia’s plans, yet if she 
had known what sort of a day it would be she would 
have been the last person in the world to want you or 
any one else to be unnecessarily exposed.” 

Eleanor smiled back at him. “I am not the least 
afraid : these men are good sailors, nothing is likely to 
happen here in the East River; I think I enjoy it some- 
thing as they do. I am really very strong; this sort of 
thing never hurts me. How will we manage about the 
landing?” 

Townsend said, “ I’ll twist a rope ladder in a minute if 
the lady will let us hoist her up in it.” 

Eleanor turned with a bright smile to the sailor still 
propped on his one leg in the rocking, tossing boat. 

“Are we to climb up that stonework?” she asked. 
“ I am certain I could do it with a rope if it had any place 
at all to catch my feet.” 

The great masonry that holds the island firm and 
defies the river was as if made of glass— smooth and 


200 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


shining and slippery: yet, with a boat-hook, his two 
hands and his one agile foot, Townsend scaled the slip- 
pery height. Holding the end of the rope ladder he stood 
there above them, silhouetted against the gray sky. 
From the boat, plunging and knocking with desperate 
violence, Eleanor made the ascent, exciting and fascinat- 
ing because of its very novelty; and then stood in the 
teeth of the blast and watched the deferential care with 
which the oarsmen helped the old clergyman to make a 
safe landing and then like monkeys scrambled up after 
him and fastened the boat in spite of the wind and 
waves. After a few cheery words and a New Year’s 
bag of tobacco for each of the crew, Mr. Noble led the 
way toward their work. 

The river roared with a ferocious, angry, moanmg 
growl: from its farther side the city showed gray, cold 
and forbidding. 

The storm that swept with relentless fury from river 
to river across the Island was only equalled by the 
bitterness of the life-storms raging inside the long, gray 
buildings. Perhaps the weather, perhaps the begin- 
ning of a new year, perhaps just because the dreary, 
hopeless uncertainty of life had come to the turning of 
the tide — ^whatever the reason — the result was apparent 
in the work of the day. 

The long Incurable Ward for men was fragrant with 
the aroma of fresh coffee, it was on tiptoe of expectation 
when the orderly drew a screen about one of the farther 
beds and Mr. Noble quietly went to the spent, wrinkled, 
worn-out man who forgot now the glory of the time gone 
by when he, as Ambassador for his country, had served 


BLACKWELL’S ISLAND 


201 


in a foreign land; forgot the weary years of pauperism 
after he had been robbed and left half-dead on life’s 
highroad, just when the downward way would have 
inevitably begun and he had gone down with a shock of 
suddenness: he forgot all that now, as he entered the 
valley of the great shadow and the immortal in him 
reached out for the eternal. While the old gaffers 
who had been swept out of every path of life smacked 
their lips over the coffee and told stories of good old 
times long agone, the old statesman found the justice 
and love he had waited for through fourteen years of 
dreary pauperism. He had been only sixty-two when 
he became an inmate of the City Home; but shattered 
and feeble after a serious illness from which he had 
come back to life to find that his young heir, his sister’s 
motherless boy, whom he had loved and petted and 
spoiled and to whom in his illness he had deeded all his 
property, signed over all his wealth, was heartless and 
without honor. He had done this lest others who were 
avaricious and had an equal claim, should try to break 
the will and give Archie trouble. Then there had come 
a clash of wills, differences of opinion, and a storm such 
as had always before cleared away in the brighter 
shining of a closer friendship; but now Archie was 
master and life was quite a different thing. The old 
uncle was weak and nerve-broken, but pride and in- 
dependence colored.^ every drop of his blue blood, and 
when, in temper, Archie had declared he was the master 
of the house and would have things as he said, the old 
man had replied in a bitter, fierce burst of temper that 
he would not touch a morsel of his bread nor spend an- 


202 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


other hour beneath his roof. He had never dreamed 
his words would be taken as final — ^he had gone out from 
comfort and luxury into the world to meet privation, 
disappointment and misery, with an old age enfeebled 
and broken by sickness and grief. There had been 
pitiful weeks of struggle before he had asked the 
shelter of the City Home, where after a few years of hard 
bitter resentment, he had told the story to Mr. Noble — 
no one else knew it. And now it was all over. What 
were the seventy-six years of suffering, of struggle or 
disappointment, as measured with the eternity stretch- 
ing out before him. 

As the trays were carried to the Woman’s Ward, 
Eleanor stopped by the bed. The sheet had been 
drawn over the face and Mr. Noble was reading the 
office for the burial of the dead. 

“ Why do you say it at once ? ” she asked, as they went 
out into the storm. 

Mr. Noble drew his great cape closely as he replied: 
“It must seem heartless, but it really is not — only 
necessary. For the sake of the others the body must be 
removed to the ‘Dead House’ at once. As there is no 
one to claim it or make any request it will go to the 
Potter’s Field on the noon boat.” 

In the Woman’s Pavilion another bed was shrouded 
and screened; again the office was read, but this in no 
wise took from the pleasure of the coffee and buns of 
those who yet lived in an uneventful present waiting for 
their summons. They sat, cheerful for the most part, 
in their coarse, blue dresses, some with caps tied under j 
their old, wrinkled chins, with a bed and chair allotted I 


BLACKWELL’S ISLAND 


203 


to their use until they should pass on. A few were able 
to move from bed to bed : many of them spent the days 
in a chair close beside the mattress on which they spent 
the night : and a few were denied even this activity, but 
waited through a weary stretch of dull days and long 
nights for the dawning of the eternal morning. There 
were fifty-three women who had spent seventy years in 
this world, now waiting in the long ward for the summons 
to the other world. Inside, life was hopeless, dull, mov- 
ing on to what? Outside the cold world and the gray 
angry river running on and on — and this was life at 
sun-set time. The great wonder was the cheer, the 
courage, the sweetness that showed in the worn time- 
furrowed faces as though it were a gleam of sun-set light 
before the dark, a touch of glory before the night; or 
could it be that they, waiting there, detached from all 
one would naturally consider part of the life of the aged, 
caught a gleam of the radiance beyond ? 

In an existence that expects nothing, that is bereft of 
anticipation, that has become simply a passive endur- 
ance, sugar buns and hot coffee are a great event; 
they prove a stimulating excitement. The warmth of 
the delicious, fragrant cups of coffee affected the old 
hearts strangely: little, tender, long-forgotten corners 
in the unwonted heat became thrilled with life. The 
atmosphere of the long dreary ward felt the glow: 
there was something absolutely cosy in the chatter of 
tongues, the rattle of dishes. Eleanor poured the cups 
full again and again and carried the trays of buns to the 
bent, crippled creatures who waited in their beds the 
great release. She brought the sunshine of other days 


204 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


back into hardened and dried hearts and the radiance 
of her own heart’s tender sympathy into their dreary 
lives. 

“ God bless you, my dear. It’s a true, happy New 
Year you’ve brought to us old folks,” it was a bent, 
crooked, little old woman standing by the stove; she 
reached out a wrinkled finger and stroked Eleanor’s 
sleeve gently. 

“Aye, aye, God bless you!” “May all the saints 
bless you!” came from the wrinkled old women stand- 
ing by and, as she went down the ward, an old woman 
sitting by the end bed reached out her hand. “ It is not 
for you to know, lady, or to measure the joy and the 
sunlight you’ve brought on this dark day into our dark 
lives; but it’s us that knows and Him what blesses, and 
it’s long this time will live in our hearts and when what 
they calls coffee comes to us our memory will just lend 
it the flavor of this and we’ll not mind the miss of what 
it doesn’t bring, thinking of this day.” 

When, after the work was over and other commis- 
sions entrusted by Miss Aurelia had been executed, she 
went with Dr. Noble through the grayness of the late 
afternoon toward the dock, she had driven the cloud 
out of the night sky of more than one life and left a 
shinings tar. 

“Sorry, Mr. Noble, the workhouse boat is froze up 
in the ice — there’s no getting her out; and the steamer’s 
in trouble up to Ward’s Island — ^she’ll be an hour 
late.” The pauper touched his cap and went on this way. 

“Then we must wait,” Mr. Noble remarked cheer- 
fully. “I am sorry for your sake. Miss Gray. What 


BLACKWELL^S ISLAND 


205 


can’t be cured must be endured and once here in this 
vale of misery little annoyances seem so insignificant, 
one cannot feel they are serious in the face of the sorrow 
and wreckage of so many human lives. If you will wait 
in the little office I will go back for a while: three of the 
bodies of my people have been taken within the hour to 
the ‘Dead House’.” 

The office was close and uninteresting: in the ‘Dead 
House’ there would be no mourner, no one but the old 
clergyman and the dead. She could pay the mark of 
respect to these unknown brothers and sisters who in the 
strange mystery of death had ceased to be paupers. 
Mr. Noble was willing, and so with the river knocking 
its ice blocks together outside they went into the cold 
and awesome stillness of the wide low building where 
pine boxes stood in piles, those in the centre — occupied; 
the others, against the outer walls — waiting. 

The man who opened the door wore workhouse 
clothes. He lighted a candle that was in a bottle and 
stood it on the top of three of the boxes piled together. 
“Them’s yourn, parson; they’ve just fetched them up. 
These is the Father’s: all of ’ems to go up on The 
Fidelity on her first morning trip.” 

As the words, so full of hope and promise and com- 
fort, fell upon the dreariness, the river with its ice bur- 
den knocking against the stone work outside and the 
moaning wind playing the dirge while the shadows made 
deeper by the flickering candle-light hung the place with 
weird festoons of mourning, Eleanor bowed her head: 
the desperate hopelessness of life endured under such 
conditions made the vivid truth of the real meaning of 


2o6 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


the words flash out like lightning in a night storm. The 
air outside seemed warm compared to the chill of the 
‘ Dead House’; the work-house man blew out the candle 
and closed the door; they came away, leaving the dead 
for the angels to watch. 

The office might be stuffy, but it was warm and light 
and Mr. Noble was a bright, clever companion with a 
keen sense of humor which saved his dreary, sad, often 
gruesome work from giving him a morbid outlook on life. 

At the end of an hour he turned to the railing beyond 
which, in solemn state, stood the desks. “ What hope 
can you give of the steamer getting us to town in time 
for dinner?” 

The warden came to the little gate: “ They have just 
wired down from above that her engine’s broke down 
and she can’t make a trip in this weather till she 
gets repaired. Fear you’ll have to stop the night over 
here. I can put you up, sir, and will with pleasure.” 

Mr. Noble turned to Eleanor. “ That is a most kind, 
hospitable offer, but I am afraid poor Miss Livingston 
will be anxious. Is there no boat to cross from any 
part of the Island to-night?” 

The warden smiled. “Practically nothing. Only 
The Fidelity, which is loading up at the pier now.” 

“Would she take live freight this once?” Mr. Noble 
asked. 

“Yes, sir, if you want to travel with the dead; there 
will be no objection, if you don’t make none. How 
about the young lady? It’s no place for her.” 

Eleanor was certain any means of getting to Miss 
Aurelia would be better than leaving her in suspense. 


BLACKWELL’S ISLAND 


207 


A light at the prow showed a yellow line across the 
water broken by the mass of floating ice. Men carried 
lanterns back and forth as they loaded the boat with its 
freight of death. 

“ Come right up to the pilot-house: it’s the only warm 
place aboard,” the captain said as they crossed the gang 
plank: but the warmth and light of the pilot house 
became unendurable shared with the pilot, a keeper and 
five work-house men. Below it was dark save the single 
light on the prow; it was cold, but Mr. Noble found a 
comer sheltered from the wind, a wooden chair for 
Eleanor and a small nail-keg for himself. Before them 
the white pine boxes were piled in rows. Eleanor 
looked at them curiously: her companion struck a 
match, looked at them, then, as the light went out, sat 
down on his keg. 

“There are seventeen dead travelers on board; they 
go to the Morgue: we have them to thank for this trip 
to-night.” 

The little boat plowed its way bravely through the 
ice-choked river in the dark. Sleet was falling; like a 
veil it hid the lights of the city and shut in the tiny craft 
with its tragic freight. For a minute they pulled up at 
the City Hospital dock and the lights cut through the 
darkness only to make it the deeper as they moved on, 
the patter of sleet, the boom of the ice breaking against 
the bow, the creaking of the timbers, the only sounds 
heard as The Fidelity, true to her name, strained every 
screw and bolt to make her way, to go upon her solemn 
quest. 

There were the silent passengers in the pine boxes: 


2o8 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


behind in their past, misery, suffering, dumb endurance 
or rebellion against the pitiless hopelessness of a cruel 
fate : and in their present — nature playing the dirge, the 
night hanging sombre folds of mourning to shroud their 
chambers of waiting; and on before them, the Morgue. 
This was all the world knew of them or could do for 
them. 

Clearly and slowly Mr. Noble repeated : 


“What matters it! — a few years more, 
Life’s surge so restless heretofore 
Shall break upon the unknown shore! 

“In that far land shall disappear 
The shadows which we follow here, — 
The mist-wreaths of our atmosphere! 
Before no work of mortal hand, 

Of human will or strength expand 
The pearl gates of the Better Land; 
Alone in that great love which gave. 
Life to the sleeper of the grave, 
Resteth the power to seek and save.” 


CHAPTER XVIII 


NIGHT AND THE STORM — DEATH 

With a cold fierce grip the storm and the winter night 
seized the city, shaking it to its very foundations, while 
with hideous, cruel howls the wind tore like a madman 
along the great highways and around the sharp corners 
as if it would carry everything into the gray whirling 
mass of floating ice where the river showed black against 
the darkness of the night. 

The storm was fierce, the hour late. Eleanor turned 
from the door; it was a long way to Washington 
Square: a cab w^as a necessity. For the twentieth 
time she went toward the corner where the electric 
lights showed the telephones, the magic wires which 
kept the great hospital in touch with the outside world, 
the tide of pain and death yet part of the great sea of life 
that flowed outside. The human creatures sitting 
before the wires, who seemed scarcely more than voices, 
were sending out messages of death and misery, of dis- 
tress and agony. One wire was carrying to a mother the 
news that a son could not last the night; another to a 
doctor, news of a sudden, unexpected change — ^heart 
had given out, surgical case had slipped away. The 
mortal and the immortal seemed almost speaking to 
each other through those wires. The need of a cab 
dwarfed into an impudent insignificance: she could not 

209 


14 


210 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


interrupt, put those aside — ^yet, what could she do? 
Would they go on forever ? Was there an unusual rush 
of necessity and death to-night or was this the ordinary 
cry of misery that went out on the wires into the great 
city? 

To-night with its silent death- journey down the river, 
all the misery they had left on the shore behind them, 
all that had met them as they came from the boat, the 
gruesome landing close under the dark shadow of the 
Morgue for the convenience of the dead passengers, then 
through the cold, the wind and the sleet into the light 
and warmth of the great hospital which had only 
proved to be intensely and keenly alive to misery, was 
depressing her. Bellevue, standing there on the city’s 
shore, seemed to gather all the misery of the tide of life 
with much of the drift of the tide from over on the Island. 
She must get away — ^the horror of it seemed to have 
entered her very being and she shivered in the oppressive 
heat of the great hall: there must be somebody to tell 
her how to get a cab, how to get away. 

As she turned, a man, evidently a doctor, came from a 
door at the end of the corridor, looked at her, stopped, 
then came quickly toward her. It was Ned Anderson. 
He would help her : she went to meet him. 

“How under heaven, Eleanor, did you know? Who 
brought you here — ^you are not alone?” He did not 
take her hand, but stood looking at her much as if she 
were a curiosity. 

“Mr. Noble brought me down from the Island this 
way. When we came in here he was suddenly called 
away. I am alone now, waiting for a cab. But, Ned, 


NIGHT AND THE STORM 


2II 


tell me — ^what awful thing has happened? Tell me, 
Ned — quickly! Tell me!” 

He caught her arm and drew her into a little side room. 

Good Heavens ! Eleanor, don’t you know anything 
about it ? I tried to get Hubert Wayne on the tele- 
phone, for I couldn’t tell what I ought to do. Provi- 
dence seems to have settled it.” He stood staring at her. 

“Settled what, Ned? Do speak,” she cried. “Who 
wants me? — suspense is the very worst misery.” 

He put his hand on her shoulder as if he thought she 
needed support, as he said: “It’s Gerald, Eleanor, 
Gerald. Of course he hasn’t any right, but he is dying, 
he is almost gone and he begged me by everything I held 
sacred on earth not to ask you to come, but just to let 
you know how it was and tell you that if he could see 
you, ask you something, he would not mind how soon 
things were over.” 

Eleanor’s face worked strangely, but she did not 
totter, and in order to give her time, Ned went on: 
“You see, poor chap, he has knocked about the world; 
nothing has made much difference since — ^you know. 
He took that woman out West a short time ago: he’s 
been pretty seedy lately — lungs in bad shape — don’t 
care — go-to-pieces sort of trouble. He didn’t know 
how bad it was, but felt there was something pretty 
wrong. He just dropped into a Pullman; how he 
reached New York, I don’t know, or what under 
heavens he came for — I guess he doesn’t know himself. 
But he drove right up to that old maiden aimt’s, who is 
responsible for lots of his spoiling, found her place in 
Twenty-third Street all shut up— she went last week to 


212 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


Jacksonville for the winter. He must have been in 
bad shape by that time: he told the cabby to drive to 
my office; I was out and when the man opened the cab 
door he foiuid him unconscious, so he did what they all 
do — fetched him here. They thought he was dying ; 
there was no clue to his identity, so the house doctor 
called me up to come down and identify him. After a 
bit he seemed to recognize my voice and roused. You 
can’t really say he is conscious — once there was a touch 
of his old self; ’twas then he begged for you. You 
can’t say ‘ No ’ to a man when he’s got only a few hours 
left, so I promised. Every time I’ve gone behind that 
screen, even when he can’t speak, his eyes just ask the 
question. Yet I was mighty glad when I telephoned 
over and found you were not at home, for it’s an awful 
thing to see a man die and surely you’ve borne enough 
for him already.” He would have gone on, but she 
turned her brown eyes upon him. 

“If the time is short, Ned, take me quickly.” 

“ You are sure you want to ? ” he asked. 

She only looked at him and passed out into the corri- 
dor. Then he led the way, half reluctantly, half won- 
deringly, but when he drew the screen back and she 
stood looking at the struggle in the corner beyond he 
whispered — “If it is going to upset you do not go in: 
he hasn’t any right to ask it.” 

She did not even look at Ned as she thrust her furs 
into his hands and turned to the bed where the shadows 
of death were gathering about the white drawn face. It 
was much the same as she had seen it the last time, that 
day at Como when the cloud had suddenly effaced all 


NIGHT AND THE STORM 


213 


the sunlight out of both their lives and left them for- 
ever in the shadow: she remembered how his face had 
showed ashy and ghastly, part of the shadows that had 
fallen about them, even as it was now, there against the 
white pillow. Only, then, the eyes had blazed with a 
fire of despair, but of life; now they were closed, shut 
as if no power could ever again open them. There was 
a silent appeal in the thin hand that was continually 
feeling for something on the white coverlet. Though 
the moans were pitifully weak, they were a cry of help- 
less agony. It was such utter weakness and helpless- 
ness, so alone, apart from all the world, that all the 
woman-pity in her, the tenderness that had held the 
little sick children, reached out to the dying man as she 
knelt by the bed and took the white hand. Its hopeless 
reaching stopped at once; the moans ceased; the awful 
restlessness, that sometimes makes agony through the 
last hours, became suddenly calmed. Ned closed the 
screen about the bed and went away. After a time the 
lips moved — she couldn’t catch the words: then at last 
she made out her own name and the word “Love” and 
something about “forgiving.” As she brushed the 
brown curls back from the damp forehead she bent very 
close and whispered something softly but distinctly into 
the poor dying ears. Instantly the heavy eyelids raised : 
it was as if the blue eyes caught the glory of the sun that 
was shining far above the storm clouds. 

“ Again, again ! ” he whispered. 

His mother could not have been more tender. 

“Yes, Gerald,” she said, “it is all forgiven. You 
have suffered too. Be at peace; never mind the past, 


214 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


look before you now. The past is with God, whatever 
the future may be.” 

He closed his long fingers about hers and lay silently 
watching her. A nurse brought something in a glass. 
With the strength it gave, he said faintly when they were 
alone: ‘‘I was as fit to be your husband as I am for the 
future that is before me. God help me! ” 

“He will,” she said. “We were children at play, 
Gerald; we mistook the toys of life for its reality. It is 
easier to trust in the love that cannot fail or make mis- 
takes, when we have found the mistakes, the utter 
frailty of human love.” 

There was a long, long silence : at last, almost like a 
breath, came her name. She bent low. 

“You need not have suffered. I have been true to 
my love for you; it’s kept me from going to the devil 
entirely. And you forgive — ^you forgive me ? O God in 
Heaven, pity my weakness — forgive — forgive — .” The 
eyes, blue as the lake of Como, looked steadily into the 
tenderness of the face bending over him, then closed very 
slowly, as it were, letting the curtains down on the last 
scene, till they were entirely shut. Even when the voice 
had ceased, the lips had continued to move as with 
the last cry of the life going: “Forgive — forgive.” 

The screen moved. Mr. Noble came to the bed as one 
accustomed to meet the angel of death, so familiar with 
his coming that he could estimate and measure the 
length of his tarry. He raised his hand in blessing and 
even the angel must have waited as the solemn words 
went out to the soul passing into the eternal. As 
Eleanor whispered, “Amen” the lips ceased to move; 


NIGHT AND THE STORM 


215 


a little sigh and the cry for forgiveness was hushed as 
Gerald Winthrop passed into the presence of his Maker. 

“He is waking up in the Eternal: you have led him 
through the darkest way and sent him toward the dawn 
of hope. God bless you, Eleanor.” It was not Mr. Noble, 
but Hubert Wayne, who said this as he led her away. 

As they came to the stairway Ned was beside her. 
“Eleanor, you are splendid: if there were more such 
women, man would be a different kind of animal. Is 
there anything I can do?” 

“Have you sent for his wife, Ned? It must be pos- 
sible to find her. Telegraph to his aunt. You will see 
to all the rest : it is not my place — ^it was a great blessing 
to have been able to do this.” 

Ned was holding her hand. “Let me call a cab; 
Idl have one here for you in just a moment. I will see 
to everything. Mother’s is so much nearer than Wash- 
ington Square,! wish you’d just go around to the house.” 

But Dr. Wayne was drawing her cloak about her and 
he answered for her: “Mrs. Barnard’s carriage is here: 
both she and Miss Livingston are to spend the night 
with us.” 

The wild winter’s wind beat against the carriage win- 
dows : she thought of the morning at Como. 

“Again you and I are battling with the storm,” she 
said, “while the storm of life passes over us. How good 
you are — ^I don’t think any one ever had such a friend.” 

Even in the darkness which was made more apparent 
by the flash of a street lamp at intervals as they drove 
on through the bitter streets, she could feel the tender- 
ness and sympathy of his eyes. 


2i6 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


“That storm at Como was the beginning and this, 
Eleanor, is the end. It is always your storm : I would 
that it were mine and that you might be shielded. 
You had endured enough without to-night. God knows 
your cup was full and this was terrible.’^ 

“No,” she said, “you are mistaken: I shall always 
be thankful for to-night. It is awful to be able to do so 
little: but a blessing to do all one can. Poor Gerald!” 

“ I was not thinking of him: Gerald was only weak — 
but of your pain, Eleanor, your poor heart.” 

There was a long silence broken only by the wind, the 
rattle of the storm against the glass and the rumble of 
the carriage wheels: then Eleanor said, “The most 
awful thing to-night is what I have found about my own 
heart — 1 haven’t any. Doctor. He has been constant in 
his love: I supposed I had been to mine, but to-night I 
found I was not. I felt the pity of a mother or a sister, 
but nothing more. Do you suppose I was ever capable 
of love? What has made me suffer? I am more hor- 
rified at myself than at anything else to-night. Indeed 
I have no right to the pity both you and Ned have given 
me. I feel as if I had opened an old grave and found 
that it did not hold my sorrow. Mother said I had no 
heart. O Doctor, haven’t I any — ^is she right ? ” 

He could feel her trembling and he drew the wraps 
about her closely. 

“ You are all heart, Eleanor. You didn’t love Gerald 
Winthrop, but the ideal you made of him, what he would 
have grown to be if you had lived together as the years 
went on. Without you he remained as he was and be- 
cause the ideal was high and your heart true and 


NIGHT AND THE STORM 


217 


strong, to-night you found just how things were. The 
realization of the failure of your ideal had you remained 
together might have come in time; but its attainment 
would have been slow, unnoticed : this sudden, unlooked 
for meeting sharply set forth its lack. Will it make life 
easier or harder for you?” 

The carriage stopped with a sudden lurch. She 
caught his hand in the dark to steady herself. 

“If you are right it will be easier; but if I have no 
heart and cannot be steadfast to anything, what can life 
hold?” 

As they went up the steps she turned to him again: 
“Ned told me once you were a wonderful diagnostician. 
Oh, I hope you are right in this case. Is my life to be a 
mistaken tangle always? Am I to fail every friend 
and every relation?” 

The footman was opening the door : their coming had 
been long watched for. He said only, “ My diagnosis 
is infallible.” Then he added almost under his 
breath, “Your inheritance, God knows from where, was 
a heart too great for this life, too steadfast and strong, 
whatever the cost, to be satisfied with anything but the 
best of life's truth and reality.” 


“All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good, shall exist; 

Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power 
Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist 
When eternity confirms the conception of an hour. 

The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard, 

The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky, 

Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard; 

Enough that He heard it once; we shall hear it by-and-bye.” 

R. Browning. 


CHAPTER XIX 


WINTER — ^PEACE IN THE NORTH WOODS 

“This is what I call winter! In town it was only 
the raveled, stained outside of his old clothes. Nature 
is poverty-stricken in the biggest, richest city that ever 
was piled up out of man’s folly; you only see the rubbed, 
worn side of the garment. But just look — ^isn’t that 
the real thing?” Miss Aurelia drew back the curtain 
from the casement and Eleanor, without rising from 
the couch, looking through ‘The Lodge’ window saw 
fairyland. 

The ground lay an unbroken stretch of shining, 
glistening white against which the evergreens stood 
out in vivid clearness while their branches bent low 
under the weight of jeweled treasure. The snow 
wreaths clung to every twig and in fleecy festoons 
decked every bough; the gray lines of fence, straggling 
irregularly across the white world, hidden beneath 
clouds of glistening whiteness; the river in its silent 
stillness stretched a smooth pathway, winding between 
the white peaks that, wearing the pure mantle of snow, 
turned to the blue heavens the smiling face of a world 
as pure and as fair as Eden must have been before 
obedient, trusting love went back to God and left a 
starved and darkened world where human pain and 
sorrow must ever reach out toward the light and 

218 


WINTER 


219 


toward the beauty of the perfect, the eternal. The 
great pine on the river bank stood like a king, regal in 
ermine; the arbor- vitae shrubs were wonderful; the 
leafless branches of the maples and the oaks made an 
exquisite tracery as it were a fretwork of alabaster; — 
the world outside was a wonder. 

Inside the logs blazed into a warm golden glow and 
a melody of homelike music; and in the high-backed 
chair beside the couch. Miss Aurelia sat, her papers 
spread out upon a table over which she worked with 
the same feverish haste she might have brought to the 
duties of a day in the Stock Exchange. 

“Oh, it is wonderful! wonderful beyond words! 
Dear Miss Aurelia, you really must let me leave my 
couch and go out into the beauty.” Eleanor laid her 
hand on the pile of papers being sorted and looked up 
into the little black eyes. 

“ ‘Having done all, to stand,’ would be an admirable 
text for a sermon for you: you have been working at 
life at a great rate for months; now you are all out of 
breath. For heaven’s sake be still till you can take 
a few real gasps. You’ve kept at it, first one thing 
and then another, till you really have the working, or 
perhaps reforming, habit. Nowadays half the people 
you meet have a habit of some kind or other; yours 
is more restless in its effect than some of them and I 
suppose not as unpleasant as others. But remember, 
child, the good Book says ‘having done all’ you must 
stop.” Miss Aurelia laid away a packet of letters in the 
drawer. 

Eleanor caught her hand. “Then surely I have not 


220 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


won a right to rest : what have I done ? I have learned 
some of life’s great lessons — that is all. From the day 
when, in my dreaming consciousness I heard my own 
baby cry, as I am certain I did, the helpless weakness, 
the sorrow and pain of child life has cried to me — ^its 
emptiness, unsatisfied yearning or unconscious starving 
have been a pain making in my heart a continual 
longing to let its unsatisfied mother-love meet the 
great need and count for something — but, after all, 
what have I done?” 

Miss Aurelia was holding the little hand that had 
been laid on hers and was examining it much as if it 
had been a curiosity, a specimen of some extinct species. 
‘‘It doesn’t look as if it were made for work. Hubert 
Wayne, who is neither a fool nor a liar, says you worked 
a revolution at the Infants’ Refuge — that when you 
were there the children became human and after you 
came away that sweet young nurse. Miss Ford, just 
struck for your principles so hard that she and that 
fool of a house doctor had a dynamite explosion. It 
broke her down, which was a mercy, for she happened in 
Dr. von Boelte’s just as Mrs. Anderson, lost in admira- 
tion of her most remarkably ordinary son, fell down 
stairs and broke her ankle. While she took care of the 
mother I fancy she saved the boy from the lunatic 
asylum. They thought at ‘The Refuge’ that they 
had exterminated all such erratic ideas; but the little 
ward maid, your disciple, who has been promoted to 
be a head nurse, makes life less of a curse for the un- 
happy waifs every day — what more do you ask ? ” 

The color came quickly into Eleanor’s cheeks. 


WINTER 


221 


“There really is nothing warmer than an Irish heart; 
it would have been a crime to let Mary Rilan’s only 
blaze in cruel scorching fire. Her letters, quite apart 
from the remarkable spelling and unique expressions, 
are wonderful for the tender, personal, individual 
interest in each one of her little charges : she writes me 
all the habits and faults and asks me what to do about 
them and tells me with real joy of all their pretty little 
ways and the bits of brightness she is able to bring into 
each of the little lives. I must read you yesterday’s 
letter with a long account of the training she is giving 
her new ward maid.” 

' Miss Aurelia took the tongs and mended the fire with 
I emphasis as she said, “It’s a great pity she couldn’t 
j train Mrs. Chester and the rest of the philanthropic 
j union. There are other kinds of work besides digging 
ditches and building sky-scrapers that make an im- 
pression on the earth and on the outlook toward heaven. 
You’ve made a bit more of blueness visible to that 
little, snapping orphan at the Orphan House.” 

Eleanor’s eyes were glowing in the fire-light. “You 
are such a dear nice friend. Miss Aurelia, you make 
anyone comfortable. Poor little Alta! A few letters, 
some bits of ribbon, a little trinket every now and then 
in the mail, showing her that some one thinks of her, 
have brought such a response. It makes me feel 
humble — ^such a whole-hearted, loving devotion she 
has given in return for such a very little bit of loving 
thought. And what is better yet, she has caught the 
I spirit and tries to pass on the personal, tender thought 
to her sixteen little brothers and sisters in the nursery.” 


222 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


When she came to see you that day before we left 
town, I fancied she had grown to look almost human: 
she had that queer kind of glitter in her eyes, not the 
insanity kind, but just the over-charged feeling of 
affection that bursts forth suddenly like the electric 
lights — ^you see she had the checked apron off that 
day, so her internal dynamo worked more normally; it 
was charged with extra force.’’ Miss Aurelia laughed 
at her own cleverness. 

Eleanor sighed as she answered, “Such very little 
efforts bring such great results: if only one had the 
strength how much one might do. That Russian family 
seemed impossible last summer: if they had all been 
separated and put into institutions it would have sim- 
plified matters and made it easy then; but they would 
always have been dependent and always have been a 
problem — their very existence a burden to themselves 
and to the city. But the right kind of help — the 
knowing how to help them to help themselves, has 
brought to them more than existence — ^happiness and 
love and the problem solved. It’s wonderful how 
Jacob Riis did it all, so simply, so naturally, but not 
as anybody else would have done it — ^no machinery, no 
red tape, just directly and simply helping them get the 
things they didn’t have and letting them feel they 
earned them themselves. I’d like to be one of his 
disciples.” 

Miss Aurelia smiled down at the eager face. “ Can’t 
be anybody’s disciple,” she said. “You’ve got your 
own following: just go ahead and lead them. Remem- 
ber Ardelia’s prophesy.” 


WINTER 


223 


Eleanor looked serious. “Dear Miss Ardelia! I 
hope her wisdom did not fail when she prophesied about 
me. I’d like to do something worth while, but it 
doesn’t look much Hke it, bringing you away from 
your work and your suffering poor in mid-^vinter, 
the time when you want to do the most.” 

Miss Aurelia’s eyes were snapping with a good- 
natured gleam. “I deserved every bit of it — exile 
would have been too good for me for doing such a fool 
thing as letting you go that awful day to the Island 
and not shielding you, child, from all that followed. 
Ned Anderson behaved like a fool. Did he come that 
day before we left to tell you he had found out he was 
one, and regretted the fact, or what under heaven did 
he want?” 

Eleanor looked into the fire, then her brown eyes, 
deep and tender, turned fully to Miss Aurelia. “Per- 
haps I ought to have told you at once what he came 
for,” she said; “he is a true, splendid fellow. We 
were always fond of each other : long, long ago Gerald 
almost disliked him because he was always one of every 
party, always mth us at ‘ Hill Crest ’ in the summer or 
joining us if we took a trip, coming in to lunch or dinner 
in town whenever he felt inclined. Then when the 
trouble came and Mr. Schuyler said I must get back 
my health and spirits and forget the past and would 
not let us go to ‘Hill Crest’ and be quiet, but insisted 
on my having a lot of new things and going to Bar 
Harbor and Saratoga and being as gay as I could, I 
was perfectly miserable. Ned came to us for a few 
days: he saw how things were — ^I was trying to be gay 


224 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


while my heart was breaking, and he asked me to 
marry him. He came to me that day to say that now 
I was free, he was ready as he had said he would 
always be.’^ 

Miss Aurelia turned quickly and looked into the 
brown eyes questioningly. 

Eleanor continued. “No, dear friend; I appreciate 
Ned, but I do not love him: and though he has proved 
himself to be one of the best of friends I am sure he 
does not now or ever did love me in that way. I 
fancy, though I do not know it, that there is some one 
else he does love, but I think he does not realize it him- 
self yet: he has let no other thought come into his life 
because he had told me he would wait. I begged him 
to love and marry and be happy and told him when 
such happiness, really worthy of his true heart, should 
come to him no one in the world would be more glad 
than I.” 

Miss Aurelia bent over the couch and pressed her 
little, wrinkled cheek against Eleanor’s soft hair as she 
whispered, “Thank God, dear! I am very glad.” 

The stamping of feet, a whiff of cold air and David, 
mail-bag in hand, snow-flecked like a true Santa Claus, 
stood in the fire light. “ O Miss Livingston, the angels 
themselves never see nothin’ purtier nor purer, nor 
more heavenly than the world outside to-day! If you 
and Miss Gray roll yourselves up and git into the sleigh 
and spin around among the mountains for an hour 
ye’d feel as if ye’d paid a visit to the New Jerusalem 
shure enough.” 

Miss Aurelia looked at Eleanor, then out through 


WINTER 


225 


the window to where the world stretched away in a 
white wonderful glory, peak after peak snow-crowned. 
“You are a wise man, David; you believe in having 
something doing. Let us go! you were wanting to 
get up, Eleanor; do you feel equal to this?” 

The color came into Eleanor’s cheeks, and she said 
enthusiastically, “ Oh, indeed, I’d like it and remem- 
ber, after this the couch knows me no more.” 

David chuckled with delight. “I’ll have Sally git 
the hot soapstones ready fur yer feets; and I’ll het 
up the rugs a bit and ye’ll think it’s summer time mth 
the winter’s good looks.” 

As Hawkins brought out the last wraps and they 
I stood waiting for the sleigh Miss Aurelia said, “There 
is one thing, Eleanor, you ought to remember; how- 
ever miserable children are they are bound, in the 
course of time, to grow up ; and when they are grown 
they can make things over and mend the ways of life.” 

They were in the sleigh, flying through the wonderful 
I world. Eleanor’s fair hair and soft color against her 
I dark furs gleamed with a strange, living beauty as she 
looked down into Miss Aurelia’s little black eyes. 
“Oh, isn’t it splendid to be alive, to have power of 
doing and feeling and living! I wish what you just 
said was true; but surely you and I have both learned 
that the possibility, the power, the joy that is once 
hopelessly lost, nothing can ever restore. What is 
the result of the awful mistakes that break and crush 
human lives? That day with Mr. Noble on the 
Island was a proof of this: in the ‘Dead House’ and 
again on ‘The Fidelity’ that night I found the answer. 
15 


226 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


And last summer, here in the North Woods, I learned 
that it is not the dollars you put into the tickets or 
supplies that bring about the results; but the thought 
and care that makes each person who comes up here 
feel that you know their needs, you are sorry and want 
to meet them, you care, you stretch out your hand to 
them and as they reach out to meet it they themselves 
grow in their own self respect, in their own power of 
being; because you consider them, they become more 
worthy to be the subject of care and thought and so 
grow every day they are here stronger morally and 
mentally just as they do physically.’’ 

Miss Aurelia looked up into the ardent face. “ How 
about Maggie Apple?” she asked. 

Eleanor looked sadly across the snow. “ Poor 
Maggie Apple! She was like that poplar over there on 
that rocky hillside; it had no chance to make deep 
roots and when the weight of snow came with the north 
wind it sank down broken and crushed: she never 
reached down into life to draw up its strength, its 
blessed sweetness; and beneath the weight of the work 
which should be the beauty and glory of life she sank 
down when the bitter blast of the cold winds of misery 
and dreariness beat upon her — it was too late to help 
her. But think how far-reaching was the help given 
to the others— -in the strength and new life which they 
took back to their little crowded homes, their families 
found a taste of something high, something fresh, 
strong and invigorating. Poor little lame Leslie 
gathers not only his brothers and sisters but all the 
other grimy little urchins from that wretched Mulberry 


WINTER 


227 


Street tenement block and makes stories of Miss Living- 
ston’s mountains; and the poor little Lynches, when 
they come in to lunch at noon to a desolate, empty 
room and bring the basket you have the woman at that 
funny little restaurant pack for them every day, they 
sit about it and play summer; and they forget the 
dingy place they call a home and fancy they are here 
in the North Woods. Charlie said to me the other 
day, ‘Sometimes I sets the water a-runnin’ in the 
sink and we shets our eyes and we can jest hear the 
river a-runnin’ along and a-hollerin’ to us and we 
gets so glad, and Polly she jest jumps up and down 
and squeals; only she keeps her eyes shet so she wont 
see there ain’t no sun, nor river, nor nothin.’ — Oh! 
isn’t this beautiful! It doesn’t seem as if two eyes could 
take in all the wonder!” 

The sleigh-bells rang softly through the clear winter 
sunshine and the world stretched out in pure, white, 
radiant beauty; and on and on they went, strength 
and vigor and life thrilling them, till Miss Aurelia told 
her heart she had done wisely after that day on the 
Island and all that followed to make the sudden break 
and bring Eleanor away to the North country for a 
month’s rest. 

The month was almost passed; March was drawing 
near and with its approach the bleak winds were coming 
across the freshets laden with a sharp, raw, chilling 
breath, the first sign of the winter’s dying. 

“It isn’t often one gets the asked-for payment for 
what one does,” Miss Aurelia said, as Hawkins carried 
away the work-bag and books to pack. 


228 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


Eleanor turned with a bright smile, holding the still 
unopened letter in her hand. “Am I the one who has 
paid you this time ? It certainly was the least I could 
do: you gave up everything to give me strength and 
life. It was the only way I could show my gratitude.’’ 

Miss Aurelia had opened a letter; she looked across 
at Eleanor. “A letter from Dr. von Boelte. He 
writes he has heard from Mr. Schuyler that your 
mother is not very well. She wants to come home; 
they have tried one place after another and it doesn’t 
seem to make any difference. One of the Italian 
doctors thinks she has something radically vTong — 
her nerves are upset and she’d better get home; they 
will probably come a little later in the spring. I 
believe people are always better in their own native 
land; globe-trotting has advantages, but in ill health 
the disadvantages grow to colossal proportions. One 
doesn’t need to study medicine or surgery to come to 
such a decision — only after you’ve studied, the opinion 
is worth a check; without a diploma it is not worth the 
breath you waste in giving the advice.” 

Eleanor sat silent and looked out at the river that had 
broken its ice-bound winter prison here and there and 
was trying to make its old roar and music. Miss 
Aurelia couldn’t bear the look in her eyes; it was that 
hungry longing that made the little old lady most 
miserable. After a moment she asked, “Haven’t you 
some news from Ned Anderson ? That’s his handwrit- 
ing if I am not mistaken.” 

Eleanor opened the envelope and then turned with 
a quick glad smile: “Dear Ned! Oh, I am so glad! 


WINTER 


229 


On Easter Monday he is to marry Miss Ford; he has 
loved her all along, I know he has, only he was so 
faithful to what he believed a duty he wouldn’t even 
think of his own heart. Let me read you what he says, 
dear boy: 

“It’s a great thing to be alive and to love. You remember Isabel 
Ford ? In the days of the Refuge when I was so cut up about your 
being there she used to bring me tidings of you. I learned to really 
know her and in her help and sympathy I first saw what a splendid 
great heart she had. When you left the Refuge and she wanted to 
know how you were I was the one to bring her the tidings: it began 
with you, this great wonderful joy and it’s gone on growing and 
growing just as the light comes when the day dawns and goes on 
getting stronger and stronger until the world is just wrapped in its 
beauty. These last few weeks — well, never mind! We are both 
sure you know and understand and we are writing to tell you about 
it, first of all. 

“Your happy, loving brother-friend, 

“Ned Anderson.” 

“I am so glad, so thankful,” and Eleanor turned 
her glowing face to Miss Aurelia. 

“I should think they’d make an excellent pair,” the 
little old lady remarked; “feel kind of sympathetic 
and friendly in a business way. He never seemed to 
me any too bright, but of course it may be that he’s 
just troubled with youngness. I think she’s rather 
clever. We will go and see them as soon as we get back 
to town; buy them a wedding present and give them our 
blessing; and you’ll just stick to me no matter how 
cranky I am and keep me from growing too old and 
dried up and I’ll help you to carry out your schemes 
and dreams and mend all the frayed places in life, to 
dam the bad holes and to put patches in here and there 


230 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


where cruelty and hardness have made bad places. All 
I have and all I am, dear, which surely is little enough, 
will go to the daily effort to help you find in helping 
others the joy and love that will not pass away with 
time or eternity.” 

“That is no true alms which the hand can hold; 

He gives nothing but worthless gold 
Who gives from a sense of duty; 

But he who gives but a slender mite, 

And gives to that which is out of sight, 

That thread of the all-sustaining Beauty 

Which runs through all and doth all unite, — 

The hand cannot clasp the whole of his alms. 

The heart outstretches its eager palms. 

For a god goes with it and makes it store 
To the soul that was starving in darkness before.” 

James Russell Lowell. 


CHAPTER XX 


MRS. Schuyler’s confession and the child 

"‘Draw the jalousies, will you? Having nothing 
but human eyes, we cannot stand the uninterrupted 
radiance of the noonday sun when the thermometer 
stands at ninety-six degrees. When, by-and-bye, we 
get the greater vision there won’t be thermometers, 
I’ll wager. No, Eleanor, I put my foot down! You 
are not going out this morning. In less than half an 
hour it will be noon.” Miss Aurelia drew a filmy lace 
handkerchief from the pocket of her silk apron and 
wiped her flushed face. Eleanor stood, hat in hand, 
fresh in a white morning dress. 

“Dear Miss Aurelia, there are several urgent things 
—really I will not mind the heat: please don’t object. 
When it is hot and people are in trouble, their need 
seems twice as great because they are so uncomfortable. 
I am young and strong. Why should I sit here in this 
cool, comfortable room whfle outside in the heat and 
the glare there are hearts suffering that I can help? 
Your people are in need and I can bring them your 
message of relief and help. Why should I stop?” 

The black eyes snapped. “Because I say so! 
People never seem able to do two things well, that you 
naturally would suppose go together. I never yet 
found the man or woman who could take care of other 
23 * 


232 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


people well and at the same time have half a degree of 
common sense about taking care of themselves. The 
mortals who spend all their lives pampering their own 
precious selves are regular Priests and Levites and their 
value to the human family is less than that of a good 
active mosquito, who, at least, teaches patience and 
endurance: and when you come across some one who 
is good at the business of taking care of others as a rule 
she is less than half-witted upon all subjects con- 
nected with her own health, comfort and happiness. 
Common sense is really the most uncommon talent 
found inside any head. There’s the telephone! Just 
take the receiver and get the message and attend to 
your business while you sit in this comfortable room.” 

Miss Aurelia pulled some dead bits from the fern on 
the table while Eleanor took the receiver from the desk. 

^‘Yes — ^yes — ^Is it you. Dr. Wayne? — ^Mother? — 
Critically ill, did you say ? She is here — ^at home ? — 
Yes, yes, I will come at once.” 

As the receiver was put back in place Miss Aurelia 
laid a hand on each of Eleanor’s shoulders and looked 
down into the white, anxious face. 

“It’s come at last! Surely it’s time! God help you! 
I’ll call the carriage and go with you as far as the door.” 
Then, as two tears fell from the black lashes, she 
added, “While we are waiting for the mills of time to 
grind, they seem to work very slowly; when they 
bring the inevitable it comes with a shock of sudden- 
ness and we are frightened and surprised. We are 
weak children at the best. God help us all!” 


MRS. SCHUYLER^S CONFESSION 


233 


“ You are here, Doctor — I am so glad. Poor mother ! 
May I go right to her?’’ Eleanor’s eyes said more 
than her lips; but Hubert Wayne only opened the 
door and stood back for her to pass in. 

How familiar yet how strange it all seemed. Jordan 
was leaving the room by an opposite door; a nurse 
was turning from the bed with a tiny glass on a tray. 
The face that lay upon the pillow Eleanor would not 
have known : the hair that used to be a rich brown was 
quite white; the cheeks sunken and flushed with fever; 
the eyes, unnaturally bright, restlessly searched the 
[ room. As they turned to Eleanor a glad light came into 
them; but when she went toward her it gave place to a 
terror, a horror of fear and she drew down in the bed 
with a cry — ‘‘Don’t come near me! Don’t touch me 
1 till you know! Help me. Doctor! Don’t go away, but 
i send every one else quickly, quickly! I can’t bear it!” 

“Don’t, mother. There’s nothing going to happen, 
dear. I have just come to try to do something for you 
and to tell you how I love you.” Eleanor was kneeling 
by the bed, bending over the shrinking figure; she 
pushed from the hot forehead a lock of the white hair 
and kissed the flushed cheek. 

But again Mrs. Schuyler cried in terror: “Don’t! 
don’t! Eleanor, you are my own child — can’t bear 
it! I never meant to wrong you and I am dying.” 

“Dear Mother, it was not you; it was by my own 
choice I went. These months have not been unhappy — 
— have found that the world has many troubles greater 
than mine and the joy of the motherhood I missed has 
made — but a wild shriek interrupted Eleanor; the 


234 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


face on the pillow worked convulsively. Dr. Wayne 
came to the other side of the bed and as he bent over 
the sick woman, Eleanor saw his face was worn and 
haggard. 

“Mrs. Schuyler,” he said very gently, “you have 
set yourself a hard task and you have little strength. 
You have done Eleanor a great wrong, but she is very 
tender; you can trust her generous love not to reproach 
you in your weakness. Spare yourself prolonged 
misery: do it at once. Remember your pain now is 
little compared to all she has endured : control yourself 
and do the one thing you can do.” 

Eleanor looked up at him; but he did not appear 
to see her. 

Mrs. Schuyler began sobbing hysterically. Eleanor 
waited, still kneeling. Then words, stifled and indis- 
tinct, came between the sobs: “Oh, I can’t, I can’t”; 
then, “I must or this awful thing will choke me trying 
to come out to tell itself! O Eleanor, Eleanor, you 
are my only child ; it was because I loved you, because 
I wanted to keep more pain from you I did it: then I 
never could tell you. You have your father’s eyes. 
They can say unspeakable things. I am a coward!” 

The eyes were saying unspeakable things, but 
Eleanor’s voice was infinitely tender as she said, “ Dear 
Mother, now you are ill don’t let anything that you 
have ever done to me worry you for a minute. I have 
learned to suffer. I am not afraid — ^just tell me if you 
want to; if not, don’t try to — ^it is forgiven already if 
there is anything to forgive.” 

“ When you know, you won’t say that. O Eleanor, 


MRS. SCHUYLER’S CONFESSION 


235 


you won’t! You couldn’t forgive the lie. It was my 
mother love” — came between the sobs and gasps. 

Eleanor’s voice was almost a whisper, “Remember, 
dear, I was almost a mother. I have suffered; I think 
I will understand — ^tell me the rest.” 

With a desperate cry the words came — “You are a 
mother! Your child did not die!” 

Eleanor rose to her feet, her face white as the bed- 
covering, her eyes a flash of strange light. Her breath 
came hard and quick; though her lips moved no 
sound came. 

The voice from the bed went on: “They all thought 
it couldn’t live and I wanted to save you pain; the 
doctors said I should decide — ^I told you it was dead; 
I thought it was dying. O Eleanor, I did. Dr. 
Wayne thought so; he said he was sure it could only 
live for a few hours.” 

Eleanor turned the full blaze of her eyes upon him 
and the words came — “You knew!” She caught at 
the bed-post to steady herself. 

The voice from the bed cried out: “Don’t look at 
him like that, Eleanor! He wouldn’t tell what wasn’t 
true; but he promised not to contradict what I said. 
He has been such a friend to us all and he got you to 
come here to-day. He has looked after her all this 
time and kept her alive.” 

Eleanor’s eyes were like a search-light as she turned 
them upon her mother. “Kept who? — ^my child? 
Tell me quickly — ^is she alive?” 

“Alive — of course: didn’t I tell you? Didn’t you 
understand — ^he wouldn’t let her die? though it would 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


236 

have been so much easier for you and simplified it all. 
O Eleanor, tell me you forgive me! Come to me 
now, I am dying.” Mrs. Schuyler’s voice rose in a 
hysterical wail. 

Eleanor was like a creature on fire: her eyes, her 
whole face were alight with a wonderful glow. She 
turned to Hubert Wayne and the words flashed out— 
“Where is my baby?” 

“With Philomena, at ‘Hillcrest,’ waiting for you.” 
“You have seen her?”— the words were a challenge. 
“ Yes. You have also— Dolores 1 ” 

Eleanor turned and passed from the room as a meteor 
crosses the sky. 


It was sunset : out of the western sky a radiant glory 
fell upon “Hill Crest” like a benediction. From the 
window of the gatehouse Eleanor could see in the golden 
glimmer the smooth green lawns rolling away in the 
distance till they reached the grove, or the garden, or 
the little brook where the lilacs were in bud and a 
splash of yellow showed where some bushes had burst 
into a blaze of early bloom; she could see the shadows 
of the old trees, the outline of the house on the top of 
the hill, and above, the sky, glorious, wonderful: she 
could hear the twitter of the mother-birds over their 
nests, hushing their young to sleep: she could hear 
the little brook chanting vespers: — ^but she could see 
and hear with a keenness of perception she had never 
before known, everything about the little child who 
lay in her arms, — the bright color, the soft warm 


MRS. SCHUYLER’S CONFESSION 237 

cheek where the long lashes lay, the brown hair touched 
with gold which lay, a little tumbled, silky mass upon 
her arm, the beauty of the little hand that the child 
had slipped into hers just as she fell asleep, the little 
pink feet that peeped from below the white night dress, 
and the gentle, even breathing — ^was to her as wonderful 
music. She forgot there was anything in all creation 
but her child and her joy of motherhood. There, in 
the very place that had belonged to her old life, her 
child had grown, had learned to walk, to talk. Had 
the old familiar haunts spoken to her of the mother 
they had known? Had the loneliness of her first bit 
of life made the little touch of love that Eleanor had 
given her in the old “Refuge” days still linger in her 
memory through all the months, where in the comfort 
of the gatehouse Philomena had tended and watched 
and cared for her with a passionate devotion ? 

When Eleanor first came to her, she was playing un- 
der the lilac bush by the brook. First she had watched 
her with her great serious dark eyes, something as she 
used to from the comer bed in the Infirmary; then as 
if something had assured her that the face bending 
over her with such infinite yearning was the same she 
had seen in her fancy, in her dreams, or that had 
lingered on and on in her memory, she had reached her 
arms out to her mother and nestled close to her breast; 
and they two, wrapped in the joy of love, had gone 
about through the spring sunshine until, as the birds 
sang Evensong, the happy child had for the first time 
in her little life, fallen asleep in her mother’s arms. 

The golden glory faded into a soft gray: then 


238 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


Eleanor rose, laid the child tenderly in the little white 
crib, went down and out through the grayness to where 
in the dell beside the brook, just below the lilac bushes 
which showed silver in the twilight, she gathered her 
hands full of the white violets that she used to bring 
to her mother in the early spring time in the old days : 
again she was back at the gatehouse and ever-ready, 
kind Phillippo was standing waiting for his message. 

Eleanor handed him the little box: “Even if it is 
late, Phillippo, Dr. Wayne will be there; you must see 
him. Tell him I want my mother to have them to- 
night: I want her to know I sent them. I gathered 
them for her as I used to and they bring to her my 
love.” 

The silver moonlight flooded the little room and fell 
upon the white crib, the little child sweetly sleeping 
there and the woman kneeling by. Hubert Wayne 
would see that the flowers brought their message. 
Eleanor remembered how worn and weary he had 
looked. For a moment the horror that he had deceived 
her had been worse than the thought of her mother. 
How she had turned upon him! how gently, how 
kindly he had told her, never speaking of himself, of 
all he had done through these two long years when he 
had never failed in ready sympathy and quick help to 
her in all her troubles. And all the time, what had he 
not been to her baby? How hard it must have been 
not to tell her! She remembered that December day 
in the office when he was just going to tell her some- 
thing and the telephone had interrupted with the news 
— ^“Dolores was the bad case of diphtheria”; then 


MRS. SCHUYLER’S CONFESSION 


239 


Christmas night when he had worked all night in the 
quarantine ward for her life; she remembered the con- 
versation at Mrs. Barnard’s on Twelfth Night when 
she declared that the agony of being a mother of an 
I institution baby would outweigh all the joy of mother- 
i| hood. He must have made arrangements at once for 
her baby to be taken away — it was only a few days 
later that the child had so suddenly disappeared. She 
thought him cold and heartless about her going — ^now 
I she knew that since that time, nearly sixteen months ago, 
he had watched with constant, untiring care the little 
child, her baby, as she grew strong and happy in 
Philomena’s little home. Philomena had told her all 
about it that afternoon, of how he came and took the 
child to the old grove down by the brook, sometimes 
for an hour at a time; and how, baby as she was, 
while she was fond of Philomena, of the big and little 
Phillippo, her devotion and her love had always been 
unquestioningly and undividedly given to the friend 
whose ready sympathy and tender love had been the 
only things that had remained unchanged all through 
her little life. 

What had he not done through the long stretch of 
these two weary years: and in the hour when was 
given to her the joy that he had kept and guarded 
safely she had, in blind indignation demanded of him 
a bald statement of the charge which he had held sacred 
because of the nobility of his great, true, loyal ideals of 
friendship — then without a word of common courtesy, 
much less of gratitude, without a look, she had turned 
from him. As she looked from the child out into the 


240 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


moonlight night, he seemed to be coming toward her, 
and far away through the silver silence it was as if she 
heard the swan song: for now she knew him for the 
knight he was. He had kept his word to her mother 
and by unfailing effort had made sure that through the 
keeping of the secret neither her child nor her own poor 
unworthy self should suffer. 

But life was before her: with that sweet face upon the 
pillow hers, she would never be alone again. Hope 
and love made her young; she would go strong in the 
sweetness of the joy of her motherhood; her woman- 
hood would become greater with the power and possi- 
bility she had never yet reached; she could now give 
Hubert Wayne a friendship that would prove her 
gratitude by its very strength and endurance and 
devotion. By reason of the very pain and loneliness 
that had made dark hours through the long months 
the light of new found joy and love shone with greater 
radiance. She would be twice the help now to those 
who must suffer and shiver in the cold of the shadow 
because in her joy she could see and understand life: 
because of her very thankfulness, she must give the 
best her heart could offer. As she knelt, she bent her 
head and rested her cheek agamst the child’s warm 
hand: the little life was hers — ^it was her very own 
baby — ^and somewhere in the silver wonder of the night, 
he, too, was her friend, her knight. She turned her 
face toward the shinmg moon: not words but heart 
beats of a life’s great thanksgiving bore the message 
of a woman’s gratitude and love beyond the starry 
stretches of the sky to the unfailing perfect Love. 


MRS. SCHUYLER’S CONFESSION 241 


There was a gentle movement and sweetly through 
the silver stillness came softly the happy laugh of the 
child. 


“ The victory of to-day, that seems so passing bright, 
Is but a hamlet rude 
Where thou shalt rest to-night. 

To-morrow up and on! 

Thou hast done well thy part, if thou 
Hast done thy best; 

As sure as I am God, 

I answer for the rest.” 


16 


CHAPTER XXI 


THE ACCIDENT— PARADISE 

Oh, the hope that is born when the air is laden with 
the scent of fruit blossoms, honeysuckle and lilacs and 
the note of the nesting bird thrills the morning with 
a wonderful promise of what the future must bring! 
As Eleanor watched the dark serious eyes grow deep and 
tender with love and heard the baby voice lisp the 
sweetest word, “ Mother,” she forgot all the sorrows that 
life had brought to her and only remembered the sweet- 
ness of her present joy. 

As Philomena served them with willing hands, a 
radiant joy in her eyes, Eleanor smiled up at her: 
“ You are right, Philomena; there is always a star in the 
darkest night and I will never forget it again.” 

Then Phillippo came, bringing a letter from Mr. 
Schuyler : 

“Dear Eleanor: 

“Your mother has had an extremely good night. She wishes me 
to say that after your flowers came she was at peace and could rest. 
I believe now, she will be able to carry out the first desire of Dr. von 
Boelte. To-day we will have her moved on board the yacht: if she 
continues as well as she is at present and if she gains, as he hopes she 
may, we will sail for Rotterdam where he knows a specialist who may 
help her. We both ask and desire very much that you will stay at 
‘ Hill Crest’ : in any case we will not occupy it this summer and leave 
it entirely at your disposal; you will please direct things exactly as 
if we were there. “Yours, in great haste, 

“ Nelson Schuyler.” 

242 


THE ACCIDENT 


243 


Eleanor looked through the frame of wistaria out at 
the stretch of green lawn dotted with bits of yellow and 
soft pink reaching away to where the gray-gabled house 
stood on top of the hill : there she had been a happy 
girl; it was her mother’s home; why should she not 
come back to the life of ease and rest and luxury for a 
little bit? Then across the greenness of the spring 
grass came a tiny figure in a white frock, her chubby 
arms filled with white lilacs that had burst into bloom in 
the night; above the blossoms two shining eyes and a 
voice like a note of music calling, “ Mother ! ” 

There in the little porch they had what Dolores called 
“a party breakfast” and Eleanor said to her heart — 
“ No, we must go out together into the world, mine and 
my baby’s; not ‘Hill Crest’ nor Mr. Schuyler’s world, 
not Miss Aurelia’s, — a child might not fit into the 
Washington Square life — ^but there is a place some- 
where; someway Dr. Wayne will show us, I can’t feel a 
fear or worry now.” She kissed the serious upturned 
face beside her and the lovelight came into the dark eyes. 

The child held up a tiny envelope, a forgotten note. 
Eleanor opened and read, written in pencil on a card : 

“Dear, Dear Child: 

“ On my way to the train. I have heard it all. Do come to us, 
you and your baby; we want you at ‘Gull’s Nest’ for a bit to be 
glad with you. Will lunch in town to-morrow to finish closing the 
house: join me there before one. “Ellen Barnard.” 

“That’s it, baby; we will go to the sea and to our 
friends, yours and mine, and we will be perfectly happy. 
Our doctor will come and it will be beautiful, won’t it, 
darling?” 


244 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


Poor Philomena begged, urged and protested, then in- 
sisted on going with Eleanor as far as Mrs. Barnard’s 
and so the heat of noon found them in the city. How 
strange the pretty, home-like, richly-furnished rooms 
looked with their shrouded furniture, dismantled walls, 
but dear Mrs. Barnard was unchanged, her atmosphere 
came with her into the room. In her greeting, so ten- 
der, so loving, was all the understanding, the compre- 
hension of the mother joy that made Eleanor’s eyes 
shine and her voice ring with a sweet joyous note. 

Philomena carried baby off to put her, for the last 
time, to sleep. Mrs. Barnard opened the window, 
moved a great chair to a cooler, more comfortable place. 
‘‘Sit there, dear, and rest. My brother is coming to 
take a little informal lunch with us. He telephoned me 
this morning he had to go up the river to see a sick child 
but he would come back by the train due in the city at 
twelve-thirty; so we ought not to be kept waiting.” 

Eleanor turned a bright face to Mrs. Barnard. 
“There will be nothing left to wish for,” she said with 
her old girlish laugh. 

Mrs. Barnard moved about the room, arranging their 
tiny lunch table. 

Eleanor could not sit still: a strange restlessness 
crept over her; she walked the length of the shrouded 
rooms: in her happiness could she be affected by such 
a merely incidental thing as the dreariness of a room, 
or was it the reaction from the excessive joy of the last 
few hours? Something certainly was oppressing her; 
she could scarcely follow what Mrs. Barnard was say- 
ing — something about the hour being late and why had 


THE ACCIDENT 


245 


the doctor not come — oh, why had he not ? She knew 
every nerve was on tension to hear the first sound of his 
foot-fall : was it that she was afraid he would resent her 
rude heartlessness yesterday and she longed above 
everything to see him smile at her with tender affection 
and friendship? No, she could not doubt him: he 
couldn’t fail her any more than the Rock of Gibraltar. 
She went through and opened the closed shutters that 
looked out upon the street: the hot air came against her 
cheeks, bringing the wheezy, tinny rattle of a hand organ 
tune; two shabby women were hurrying by; a florist’s 
wagon passed filled with flowering plants to make some 
city dweller dream of the fresh, sweet country; then a 
boy turned the corner sending before him his nasal voice: 
“Extry,” “Extry,” “Terrible accident in the Tunnel,” 
“Extry, ” “Northern Express runs into Poughkeepsie 
Local, Fifty Passengers killed — Extry!” “Morning 
Journal Extry!” 

She knew now this was what she had been listening 
for: this had come instead of that step. Could he be 
hurt ? She leaned from the window and the boy came 
toward her still sending his cry of death and desolation 
into the hot dusty street. Mrs. Barnard was begging 
her to come in out of the sun; she was saying, “Another 
accident, how terrible ! Don’t read about it, dear, you 
are so happy.” Then she saw Eleanor’s face and read 
the great head lines. “My dear, you don’t think Hu- 
bert could have been on that train? The ^Journal’ 
is not to be depended upon; read what it says. Oh, it 
couldn’t be possible: it’s only an hour since his train 
was due.” 


246 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


But it said no more: the head lines had been added to 
the morning issue of the paper. 

The world had lost all its light : Eleanor stood, dazed, 
stunned. Mrs. Barnard went into the library: Eleanor 
knew she was telephoning, but she could not move; only 
her eyes asked the question when her friend returned. 

The answer came, broken and indistinct. “Yes, it is 
the local from Camelot. The accident occurred just 
after it entered the tunnel: some mistake about 
signals.” 

Eleanor caught her breath, it came hard and her lips 
moved stiffly as she whispered the question, “Are you 
certain he was on that train ? ” 

Mrs. Barnard put her arms about Eleanor: “Yes, he 
was. I telephoned to Camelot: Mr. Brown says the 
carriage left him at the station in good time. God help 
us!” 

Eleanor pressed her friend’s cheek tenderly; she 
could not cry or speak, the sorrow was hers only: 
no one could feel as she did; no one could ever know 
such pain. Yet there was hope: he might be hurt 
only just a little, he might need her. She turned 
quickly, caught her hat — 

Mrs. Barnard laid her hand on her arm: “ Where are 
you going, dear ?” — then as if she understood she added, 
“Yes, let us go and find out for ourselves. I will call a 
cab.” 

One moment Eleanor bent over the little sleeping child, 
kissed her, pressed her little hand against her own throb- 
bing head, then they were rolling away. The cab horse 
was moving unusually fast for his kind, yet he seemed to 


THE ACCIDENT 


247 


the two passengers to be a snail : they were unconscious 
of the noise, the heat, the glare. The only thing that 
stood out with any definite clearness was the dreariness 
I of the Refuge as they drove by. What would it always 
I stand for in the future? Not the place where children 
i suffer; but the place where he had proved his valor, 
I shown his knightly courage, his tender strength to every 
one that suffered, to her baby and to herself. How 
i long had they gone on through the glaring heat? To 
1 Eleanor, it seemed a lifetime before Mrs. Barnard, 
i taking her hand in her own, said gently, “ We are here at 
I last, dear. We both know how to suffer; you have en- 
I dured worse things than this, I need not tell you to be 
I brave. You will help me, dear, won’t you?” 

Eleanor looked into the dear face beside her as she 
whispered, ‘‘No, Mrs. Barnard, nothing in the world 
could be worse than this: help me now as you always 
have.” 

For answer Mrs. Barnard kissed her. 

The cab had stopped; they were climbing down in 
the heat and the glare of noon into an anxious, jostling 
crowd. A policeman was waving his club and calling, 
“You just step back, every last one of youse; let the 
wreckers have the field”; then as a young woman with 
an apron thrown over her head spoke to him he an- 
swered cheerily, “I bet you he was your sweetheart 
and there’ll be many more sweethearts smashed up 
before they get to the end, but the sooner they get at it 
the sooner you’ll know. Keep your salt water till you 
find out if you’re going to need it ; it’s too dry a day to 
do any pumping you don’t need to.” 


248 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


As Mrs. Barnard turned to the policeman, Eleanor 
remembered what Dr. Mills had said : “ She treats you 
as if you were some great person and you are bound to 
treat her as if she were a queen.’’ With gracious, 
queenly dignity she turned to the big man : “At times 
like this we turn to the guardians of our city’s peace 
and law for information. Can you tell me just how 
serious the accident really is?” 

Respect, deference and consideration seemed to 
radiate from every brass button: “It’s a pretty bad 
job. Madam; you see the local had the right of way, 
but through some mistake the engineer on the express 
didn’t get the signal or was too dumb to take it, which it 
was he’ll never tell, for he went to kingdom come all on 
a sudden when his engine went into that rear coach : 
three of the local’s coaches and two of the express’s and 
the engine is down there nothing but splinters.” 

Mrs. Barnard touched his arm, “But the passengers: 
isn’t it possible to tell yet?” 

“There’s no getting through; the track is blocked 
above and below. The rear express cars were switched 
back and the front car on the local, although it’s a good 
deal splintered, has been gotten down pretty near to the 
station: they say the passengers in that went home 
shaking in their boots but with mighty thanksgiving.” 

Mrs. Barnard’s voice was steady but full of a strong 
appeal : “ If there is any way in which we can gain in- 
formation you will tell us, won’t you ? It is a passenger 
in the local that causes our great anxiety. I am sure 
you will help us if you can.” 

“ Just get in your cab, ma’am, and drive into the shade 


THE ACCIDENT 


249 


if you can find a bit. I’ll fetch you word just as soon as 
I get a bit of news and I’ll know it the very minute them 
workers below finds anything. There’s at least fifty 
men to work now,” he said, pointing to where a railing 
protected one of the openings of the tunnel which at in- 
tervals break the surface of the ground all the length of 
Park Avenue. 

The cab passed slowly and wearily in and out through 
the openings along the hot street. Once Mrs. Barnard 
turned and looked into Eleanor’s face: neither woman 
spoke, but the brown eyes must have said something, 

' for after a moment she gathered Eleanor into her arms 
and kissed her, whispering, ‘^Poor child!” 

How long the cab horse jogged upon his way the 
i hearts in the cab, throbbing with an agony of suspense, 
i had no conception : time was lost. They were wakened 
j to a sudden vivid hope — the policeman was coming. 

I “They are going to fetch the wreckage up this way, 
lady, and so make the way clear to get at what’s under- 
neath. If you’ll stay near yonder opening maybe we 
could get some tidings. You don’t need to be afraid: 

‘ they ain’t going to fetch any corpses up; they’re going 
down on a litter: they’ve got a better way of taking care 
of them down to Forty-second Street than we could fix 
up here. Stay in your cab but just drive near; I’ll 
keep one eye on you.” 

A temporary half-ladder, half-stairway had been 
erected reaching from the blackness below to the awful 
glare of the noon-day sun. Up it they were bringing a 
motley array of broken and splintered articles of every 
sort: a crushed car seat; what was left of a window; 


250 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


some portmanteaus; a bundle of golf sticks; arms full 
of debris; then — ^Eleanor gave a little cry — sl doctor’s 
black leather bag. 

The light went out of her brown eyes; at that mo- 
ment hope died in her heart; dimly, indistinctly she 
heard the policeman and Mrs. Barnard discussing 
various possibilities. Then a carriage drove up; 
a number of doctors were hurrying toward the opening; 
some one came to them; Dr. von Boelte w^as greeting 
them; she heard him say, “Dr. Wayne! O, mein 
Gotti I trust he will be safe,” then he was making 
promises; Mrs. Barnard was thanking him; and they 
were driving on and on through the heat and the glare 
yet the blaze of noon-day to Eleanor was darkness. 

She followed Mrs. Barnard into Dr. Wayne’s office. 
Had there been some vain hope he might have escaped 
and gone there ? How absurd 1 The place was crowd- 
ed with an awful emptiness and silent memories called 
drearily. A volume of Browning lay on the desk, a 
paper knife marking the place; beside it was the tele- 
phone which had carried out into the world messages of 
comfort, of death, of relief and of blessing and which, 
that winter day had brought the news of Dolores’ 
desperate condition just at the moment when she felt 
certain now, as she looked back, he had been going to 
tell her the truth. How tender, how kind he had been 
that day when the storm was beating wildly outside; 
but how blind, how selfish she had been: she remem- 
bered so well how he stood before the window looking 
at the snow, his hands thrust deep in his pockets and 
she had wondered why he did not come to her with 


THE ACCIDENT 


251 


some caressing touch of sympathy: now she understood 
and she knew well that then and always her whole life 
had turned to him, gone to him, reached out to him 
belonged to him, only her poor blind heart never had 
understood, never really wakened up to any sense of 
comprehension until it was too late. 

Someone was at the door: Mrs. Barnard went for- 
ward expectantly, but Eleanor sank down in the office 
chair and covered her face : some hidden sense told her 
it was not Hubert Wayne. It did not seem strange that 
Ned Anderson should come in. There was real con- 
cern and sorrow in his face : he was talking kindly and 
tenderly; then he turned to her and took her hands. 
“We have no certainty of the worst, Eleanor: the 
minute Dr. von Boelte told me you had come here I 
hurried after you. I want you to take Mrs. Barnard 
right down to the ‘Gull’s Nest.’ There can’t be any 
news for hours; the moment there are any tidings I will 
let you know: you can trust me to do all that can be 
done; the telephone would reach you as quickly there 
as it would here. I am sure he would wish it; Mrs. 
Barnard cannot stand the strain, you must look out for 
her.” 

Perhaps the two women were too crushed and dazed 
to resist; Eleanor was conscious only of her pain and a 
longing to comfort and shield Mrs. Barnard just as he 
would have done, as he had done, ever since the sorrow 
of her widowhood had darkened her life. 

Eleanor knew dimly their cab was hurrying through 
crowded streets; from the ferry-boat she looked in a 
dazed way over the stretch of waters — as the train 


252 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


hurried across the country she and Mrs. Barnard held 
each other’s hands. 

The children were on the beach: they need not yet 
feel the shadow. The two friends sat in the little 
library to be close to the telephone: once it rang 
sharply. Mrs. Barnard motioned Eleanor to take the 
receiver: “New York wants 487” — was the pause that 
followed years before Ned’s voice brought the news: 
“No trace of the doctor yet, but in the debris a copy of 
Littell’s Living Age with his address slip. All the 
bodies have been removed from that car, but his is not 
among them.” 

Was she glad or was it still a horror to feel that dear 
face, those tender hands always reaching out to the 
needs of others were yet lying somewhere in that awful 
debris! 

The hours wore wearily on; twilight crept up out of 
the sea, yet the telephone was silent. Eleanor turned 
from the window to Mrs. Barnard: “Don’t you think 
we might telephone to the Grand Central; at the office 
they might have some news that Ned missed.” 

They rang, then rang again and again; then looked 
at each other with the horrible realization that some- 
thing had befallen the wire. Oh, the cruelty of fate, 
that then of all times the telephone should be out of 
order! At that very moment Ned might be trying to 
send them the final news, the tidings they dreaded, 
yet longed for. 

There was no other telephone on the Point. Eleanor 
heard Mrs. Barnard send the man to the central office 
in the village, two miles away. 


THE ACCIDENT 


253 


The children were saying “Good night they clung 
close to their mother. Eleanor took little Dolores in her 
arms; the child nestled close. With her baby held to 
her breast, for the first time the tears came. When the 
child was fast asleep Philomena, who had not left her 
since she knew of her sorrow, caught her hand and 
kissed it in the old way: “Oh, my lady, there is a star 
for so dark a night even as this. Keep hope ; let not the 
dear heart break.” 

Mrs. Barnard was with the children: Eleanor went 
out across the downs to where the old wreck showed 
dark against the sea. She remembered Dorothy’s 
words; her heart echoed them: “When we want you 
and you are not here, the day will seem forever long.” 

Now she understood with awful vividness; she knew, 
she comprehended all he had said and all he had left 
unsaid; and when he was silent, how his eyes had cried 
out to her! 

The waves broke upon the shore with a gentle, sad 
murmur. She realized now that the desolation of that 
day at Como when the storm swept down the moun- 
tains was only a shadow compared to the darkness of 
the present; the light it had obscured was as the going 
out of a candle while this was as the darkening of the 
sun. She clung, the wreck of her life to the wreck of the 
old vessel. 

The moon shining through the fluff of soft clouds 
made a silver path across the water, reaching away in 
the far distance till it seemed to touch the horizon where 
the billowy clouds turned to silver sheen in the light, 
marking, as it were, the entrance to Paradise. 


254 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


An awful agony throbbed through every fibre of her 
being, seemed fairly to radiate from her, yet with every 
thought, every desire there was a wild fierce joy, a rap- 
ture in the very pain that it was hers. The sorrow, the 
loss were hers because that which caused them was so 
immeasurably hers. She never questioned, she never 
doubted, she knew with a certainty that was as positive 
as the beating of her own heart, as the night that was 
in the heavens above her, as the rock that was beneath 
her feet, that this wonder was hers; that all her life had 
been waiting for it ; that she had been always living for 
the realization of this hour’s bliss. That it had come 
shrouded in the darkness of an awful agony, did not rob 
it of its wonder. Not for all the pain that all the worlds 
of a mighty universe could hold would she have given 
up the ecstacy of her heart’s possession. 

Love — real, true, strong, eternal — came wdth a 
thrill of new life. If the sorrow had not come, time 
would be stretching before her like that silver path 
across the sea into greater, wider, more radiant wonder. 
But now — through all the years the bliss of her very 
agony would teach her life’s great lesson. She covered 
her face and clung to the wreck, and the storm of deso- 
lation swept through her very being. Yet he was hers 
forever; somewhere, sometime, she would come to him; 
love must make strength and power. She must go out 
into life and because of what God had given her heart, 
she must make her way a path of glory that should 
shine in a dark world ; and then one day in the hereafter 
he would come, through the shining glory. 

She turned to the sea and there, where the last wave 


THE ACCIDENT 


255 


had left a bit of silvery foam on the sand, stood — 
Hubert Wayne. 

“Out of the dusk a shadow, 

Then a spark; 

Out of the cloud a silence, 

Then a lark; 

Out of the heart a rapture. 

Then a pain; 

Out of the dead cold ashes. 

Life again.” 

John B. Tabb. 


CHAPTER XXII 


SPRING — BEAUTY AND LOVE 

“Oh, it’s just beautiful! I can’t seem to hold it all; 
if here ain’t a sunbeam a-dancm’ right on your shoe 
and there are heaps more of ’em playin’ right out there 
on the river. The world’s all a-shinin’ ’cause it’s so 
glad and me and you’s so glad too, ain’t we?” Alta 
Noll, having finished the last button on the sixteenth 
pair of shoes, caught the baby up for a rapturous hug; 
two little arms closed tightly about her neck and the 
baby face hid itself on Alta’s shoulder quite as if it was 
a familiar pillow. 

The other fifteen pairs of little boots marched off in 
regular tread to the washroom. Alta sitting there on 
the floor, with the baby and the sunbeams, went on 
ecstatically, “I’ll tell you all about it, darling: how 
beautiful she looks, and all the other folks’s that’ll be 
there so stylish, and I’ll be there along with all the 
swells: if you was bigger you’d come too; but you see 
folks doesn’t go to weddings afore they’s two years old. 
All that loves her is to be happy with her; and I’m to 
wear a rosy dress and a rosy bow on my hair and the 
beautifulest hat you ever seen with a big white bow on 
it; and, oh, baby, we’re all going to have ice cream for 
our dinner here to-day and cake with frostin’, ’cause 
256 


SPRING 


257 

we’ve got to be glad too just like the world is cause it’s 
spring, and she’s goin’ to be married.” 

The windows of the Refuge were thrown wide and 
the spring sunshine leaped joyously in. It touched with 
tender, fairy fingers the two rows of babies, reaching 
down the ward and wrapped them in a magic mantle of 
yellow sheen and laid upon the polished floor a carpet 
woven of golden beams. “Take the baby to the tub: 
there, go. Sonny! You want a nice splatter-dash, don’t 
you?” but as the child clung to Mary Rilan in terror, 
she added to the ward maid — “ You just finish up things 
here, Sarah, and I’ll give him his bath meself; you see, 
them things ain’t been the habit in his life, they were a 
kind of out of fashion where he growed up; he’ll not 
mind it cornin’ from me. You see, now he’s orful 
skeered, but he’ll git used to us; then you can break him 
in gentle like. There’s never goin to be one last baby 
unhappy this whole day in this ward, if me name’s 
Mary Rilan; ’cause this is her weddin’ day and every 
one of her little brothers and sisters, as she calls ’em, is 
going to be glad every blessed minute.” 

The sun still laid its golden carpet across the ward 
floor, when Mary, carrying the clean, rosy, laughing, 
crowing baby, came from the bath room. “ Sarah, just 
you finish him up. He’s had the time of his life and he’s 
just lovin’ everybody. You mind and keep ’em all 
happy and I’ll give you a piece of weddin’ cake and tell 
you every last thing about it. Only remember nobody’s 
to be miserable here one minute while I’m gone. I’ve 
got to be leavin’ now, else I’ll be late to the church, and 
if I didn’t get there time enough to see ’em come in I’d 


17 


258 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


just die. I’ll come in and let you see how I look afore 
I start; when I git on that new dress they’ll think I’m 
one of the nobs. Oh, that hat’s just the thing, it’s all 
white and soft and genteel. Sarah, I’ll give you the 
new one I had with the roses on it : now Miss Livingston 
has give me the weddin’ one, you see I don’t need two. 
Oh, the saints be praised! I never did see the sun shinin’ 
like it’s doin’ to-day: it seems like the whole world’s 
just right. It’s like Miss Gray, all beautiful and happy; 
it’s really truly spring-time and it’s all love.” 

In the rush and clatter of dishes, of hurrying waiters 
and of many chattering voices that are all part of the 
service of a hotel breakfast, David Pendergast leaned 
across the table: “Sally you’ve got the Lodge key 
safe, ain’t you? Jest think, since Miss Livingston first 
opened that door there ain’t never been a day dawn that 
you and me ain’t been there to open it to whatsoever life 
was agoin’ to fetch along. I jest reckon the old place 
has so got the heart of Nature in it that it kinder under- 
stands human ways; I believe it knows this ain’t no 
common day. You’d a kind of think they’d a shut up 
the shops down here, when the cleverest doctor as ever 
drew breath was agoin’ to marry one of the sweetest 
women who ever looked out of kind, shinin’ eyes at the 
troubles of this old world, for all the earth as if every one 
of them were hern : but I’ve heard tell that New York 
shopkeepers was awful avaricious. I can’t eat a mite, 
no, there ain’t no use your talkin’ about it — that coffee’ll 
kind of hold me together. Git on your fine duds and 
let’s git round to the church as fast as we can and git a 
good seat. I want to be near enough to hear and to see 


SPRING 


259 

when he says he’s a-goin’ to take her for hisen, for better 
or worser.” 

As, leaving the dining room, they turned and looked 
out into the street where a flower stall showed violets and 
roses and fresh white lilacs, David added, “Whether 
the shopkeepers know it or not, the world knows it and 
it’s just a-throbbin’ and a-shinin’ with the joy of Spring 
and of lovin’.” 

A coupe threaded its way through the motley throng 
on Broadway. Mrs. Anderson looked into her hus- 
band’s face. “Do you know, I believe this is a great 
day, not only for the bride and groom but for hundreds 
of those who must suffer. Two lives with such a strong 
and single aim will make their power felt and it will 
reach out and out, like circles on the water. Isn’t it 
splendid to live in such a way!” 

“Yes,” he said, “how strange life is! Who would 
ever have believed all this of Eleanor Schuyler? She 
was always sweet and pretty. She danced awfully well 
and had everything as she wished it. Mr. and Mrs. 
Schuyler would never have let her have this kind of a 
wedding, just quiet and simple; but Miss Aurelia and 
Hubert Wayne let her do anything under Heaven she 
wants to. Miss Aurelia sent ‘ wedding finery,’ as she 
expresses it, to all Eleanor’s uniformed friends. I expect 
there will be a pretty big crowd ; lots of her father’s old 
friends will turn out and there will be a good many of 
the old set there, who have not seen her since her 
troubles began.” 

Mrs. Anderson smiled out of the carriage window at 
the hurrying throng. “ Wffien they see her to-day they 


26 o 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


will not believe that she ever had any trouble; I never 
saw such radiant joy — ^her eyes are wonderful.” 

Ned Anderson laid his hand on his wife’s. “Isabel, 
they always were wonderful; but now it’s as if she had 
become the personification of our joy, of springtime and 
of love.” 

The darts of golden sunlight falling through a certain 
dining room window in Washington Square touched the 
silver on the old mahogany table till it gave back to the 
old wainscoted room a shimmering gleam, and falling 
upon the cut glass, made myriads of tiny rainbows, em- 
blems of Hope that belonged to the spring morning and 
to the joy that tingled through every breeze of the fresh, 
sweet, beautiful day. All the old Livingston plate and : 
glass was making glad array for the first time in many i 
years for a wedding feast. In the big square room i 
stood little Miss Aurelia, her black eyes tender with the 
soft love-light, as she turned in her hands certain old 
Livingston jewels. Then she laid them in a tiny 
Japanese cabinet and turning with it in her hand re- 
marked, “ Getting such a man as he is, nothing else that j 
is given to her can count for much one way or the other. [ 
When a woman has to content her heart with a poor \ 
stick that’s only half a man, I should think the wedding ^ 
presents would count for a good deal. When a real ■ 
man marries a wax doll, instead of a woman, he gets no 
premium with the prize, there are no compensations for ! 
his insanity; it always seems to me rather hard on him. j 
I expect that’s why they have more license and are al- I 
lowed to express their desires, while a woman, however J 
her heart cries out, has to just shut it up, unless his \ 


SPRING 


261 


lordship gives her an opportunity. Such a woman as 
Eleanor and such a man as Hubert are blinded by the 
light of each other’s very being, till they can’t see any- 
thing else. How they have remembered every one! 
There are more poor, forlorn, miserable, loveless people 
made happy to-day than one often sees. They’ve been 
making every one else happy, they’ve got to make me 
happy and take all the old Livingston jewels whether 
they want to or not : they said they would do anything 
in the world for me, now they have the chance. Oh, 
bless my soul! Hubert Wayne had better give me some- 
thing for my eyes. I can’t have had a cataract grow in 
the night; I can’t see plainly to-day, or keep the mist out 
of them : why should 1 ? Eyes that have reached sunset 
time are blinded by the glory of Life’s noon-tide light — 
but both those children are mine, and any fool would 
know these are not tears; how could they be? for they 
both belong to me forever and forever, that man and 
that woman, they and their love. God help us all! 
Ardelia said she’d do some great thing; she’s doing it to- 
day and the breath of the morning is the sweeter. Tell 
me the old world does not feel with its children : — that’s 
all poppy -cock! The springtime is more absolutely 
thrilled with new life because love is new born and to- 
day puts on its crown.” 

Mrs. Barnard’s library in the spring sunshine was as 
bright as a bit of ray lady’s garden and sweet with the 
delicious fragrance of many flowers and happy with the 
music of soft voices as three little figures all in white, held 
blossoms up toward the rubber tree, while Dorothy said : 
These are wedding flowers. Tinker Bell and me and 


262 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


Katryn are going to put them all along the way 
that the marriers must come after they are made 
each other.” 

And Katryn, holding her blossoms high, cried, “Does 
their sweetness come up to you, Tinker ? They are white 
lilacs and lilies of the valley mostly and they will make 
the way sweet always and always wherever the marriers 
go all over the world. Uncle Hubert said it would be 
sweet anyhow whether there were flowers or not; they 
weren’t to make it, only just to show what is there al- 
ready, so you must just sing your sweetest to-day, 
Tinker, and don’t let the other fairies make you go 
away till you really get tired, for there’s not to be a sorry 
thing in to-day, only just one great big glad. O Dor- 
othy, ’cause Dolores is so little and can’t be a flower 
girl, let’s us make her a weddmg fairy. Come, darling, 
we’ll put the flowers all about you and make believe you 
are a really truly fairy.” 

The great dark eyes that used to have shadows seemed 
to gather the brightness of the blossoms as the child 
seated on the cushions, daintily touched the clusters of 
sweet spring flowers heaped about her. Dorothy stood 
gazing with admiration. “O Dolores, you are the 
dearest little darling in the world : if ever I get married 
you’ll be my flower girl; I suppose by that time you’ll 
be big enough.” 

Katryn stood, a great cluster of white blossoms in 
her hand, her blue eyes large and wistful: “ O Dorothy, 
I hope some day God will send me a nice marrier like 
Uncle Hubert, but I’m afraid He won’t have another one 
left. Oh, I’d love to be a bride, wouldn’t you ? ” 


SPRING 


263 


The confident Dorothy responded warmly, Oh, yes, 
of course, I’m going to be a bride sometime; when it’s 
spring and I find my marrier. Won’t it be fun to make 
every one all full of glads like they are to-day?” 

Katryn laid a cluster of white flowers on Dolores’ soft 
hair. “Mother says if when we are little girls we 
think about other people, when we grow up we’ll know 
just how to live and to love.” 

The flower-crowned baby, among the blossoms, 
clapped her hands softly as she echoed, “live and love.” 

The sun fell upon the low rambling old church like a 
benediction. From the doorway Philomena’s dark eyes 
looked out into the little stretch of green where the sil- 
very spray of a fountain made soft music ; here and there 
the green was splashed with bits of bright color, where 
springtime blossoms showed; beyond, the noise and 
roar of the great city made, as it were, the organ notes 
of Life’s symphony, while behind her, through the open 
door, came the Wedding Hymn. She turned, a radiant 
light of great happiness transfiguring her earnest face, 
and she said to her own heart as she went toward the 
music and the joy within : “ Oh, my lady, the night is 
past and with the dawning of your joy day, the world 
makes all gladness. Here, or in dear Italy, it is all the 
same; the light and the sun and the spring come to the 
life, when dawn breaks in the heart with love.” 

They came through the mystic, heart- thrilling, life- 
throbbing melody of the wedding march, out into the 
spring morning, which was vibrant with the voices of 
happy nesting birds and the silver chime of the wedding 
bells, — past the bit of green; where the flowers were 


264 


WEEPERS IN PLAYTIME 


abloom, where the soft spray from the fountain fell 
through the golden sunshine in a wealth of jeweled 
glory. 

Eleanor, all in white, seemed a part of the morning 
and of spring; her eyes were wonderful with their new 
joy, they had the glory of the star which shone through 
her night and set in the radiant dawn of her life’s new 
day, and in their depths they would hold and keep 
its gleam and sparkle forever, through all the stretches of 
the joylife which had come to her womanhood. 

And Hubert Wayne: — it was early with his clock to- 
day as the joy in his face flashed out into the world a 
smile of tender comprehending sympathy, understand- 
ing life in its fullness, because in finding its best and 
greatest treasure, he measured life by love. 

Then they went through the lych-gate, out to the rush- 
ing world with its wrongs, its sorrows and its needs; 
with its Altas and Barneys and Annies and Ethels and 
all its other little shadow brothers and sisters, reaching 
out their helpless arms and calling out of the hunger 
of their hearts for the tender personal touch that proves 
to us we are akin, that we are a great, wide, scattered but 
closely bound human family. 

They two, with happiness and joy frolicking in their 
life’s pathway, went out into the world, to hush the cry 
with a glad blessed answer; to feed the hunger with the 
riches of their own hearts’ fullness; and along the 
shadowed way, where weary little feet tread, to make the 
glad blessed sunshine of love. 

As they went with the radiant beauty of the spring 
day falling about them, they turned to each other and 


SPRING 265 

she whispered, “Dear heart, life really is beauty and 
love.” 

“There are many kinds of love — as many kinds of light, 

And every kind of love makes a glory in the night; 

There is a love that stirs the heart and love that gives it rest, 
But the love that leads life upward is the noblest and the best.” 

Henry Van Dyke. 



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JAN W 
BORKEEPER 


PRESERVATION TECHNOLOGIES. INC. 
111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Twp., PA 16066 
(412)779-2111 

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